Best 87 quotes of Peter Ustinov on MyQuotes

Acting on television is like being asked by the captain to entertain the passengers while the ship goes down.

A diplomat these days is nothing but a head waiter who's allowed to sit down occasionally.

All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses ... fix your bayonets boys ...gentlemen, synchronize your watches ... in ten seconds time the barrage starts ... a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years...

American democracy is the inalienable right to sit on your front porch, in your pyjamas, drinking a can of beer and shouting out 'Where else is this possible?' Which doesn't seem to me to be freedom, really.

Artificial glamor-false eyelashes, that sort of thing-usually is put on to hide a vacuum. The most beautiful face can only look vacuous if it masks an empty head.

As I grow older I find that though I think I'm saying the same things as I always did, people listen to me more.

At my age, I'm often asked if I'm frightened of death and my reply is always, I can't remember being frightened of birth.

At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

A twinge of conscience is a glimpse of God.

Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.

British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.

Did you know that every two hours the nations of this world spend as much on armaments as they spend on the children of this world every year?

Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only one day, of modern warfare.

Generals are fascinating cases of arrested development - after all, at five all of us wanted to be generals.

Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.

I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.

I am convinced that it is of primordial importance to learn more every year than the year before. After all, what is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn.

I am just a man, not fit to do the work of God... or the Devil.

I believe that the Jews have made a contribution to the human condition out of all proportion to their numbers: I believe them to be an immense people. Not only have they supplied the world with two leaders of the stature of Jesus Christ and Karl Marx, but they have even indulged in the luxury of following neither one nor the other.

I can never forgive God for having invented the French

I don't know why I have these dreams. I've never wanted to be Pope. In fact, I have a greater affinity to Martin Luther.

If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

I had started by imitating a parrot, which is unusual, in that a parrot is supposed to imitate you. By taking the initiative you allow the parrot no alternative but to be itself, which proves again that attack is often the best defence.

I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your - politeness.

I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic.

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins.

I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. … It's the party at present in power.

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.

Irrespective of nationality, soldiers are always open to the same discomfort and to the same comradeship the world over. I'll make things easy for you if you make things easy for me. That is, after all the unwritten law of the barracks.

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.

Laughter... the most civilized music in the world.

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

Life is unfair but remember sometimes it is unfair in your favour.

Life was cheap in the Middle Ages. It has become cheaper since. It is only in specific battles for specific lives that our culture is put to the test, and with it our humanity.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.

Men think about women. Women think about what men think about them