Peter Ustinov Quotes

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

The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Monica Seles: I'd hate to be next door to her on her wedding night.

Flogging. The only solution to every problem. I warrant even the culprit himself doesn't know! It was just... his... turn!

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

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

If you're going to be a prisoner of your own mind, the least you can do is make sure it's well furnished.

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.

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

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.

We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven't thought up questions.

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

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.

To live like a poor man is only fun when you are rich.

To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.

What is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn?

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.

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.

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 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.

There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners.

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.

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

The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops.

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.

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.

The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

The older I get, the more people listen to me - even though I say the same as always.

When I was small, I would refuse to drink when I ate fish because I thought the fish would reconstitute itself in my stomach

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.

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

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

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

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

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

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