Peter Ustinov Quotes

Peter Ustinov offers clever, satirical takes on art, politics, and relationships that feel like a witty dinner party.

63 quotes

1. 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.

2. Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

3. Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

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

5. The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

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

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

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

9. To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.

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

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

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

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

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

15. Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

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

17. When people say to me 'Have a nice day', I reply 'Sorry, I've made other plans'.

18. Sex is a conversation carried out by other means.

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

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

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

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

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

24. Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

25. Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.

26. Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique.

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

28. 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.

29. The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.

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

31. 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.

32. 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.

33. Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.

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

35. Sunshine Sally and Peter Ustinov don't like the scene anyhow.

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

37. There are experts in little things but there are no experts in big things. There are experts in this fact and that fact but there are no moral experts.

38. 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.

39. I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter.

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

41. That weakness in human nature which goes by the name of strength.

42. Two members of my profession who are not urgently needed by my profession, Mr. Ronald Reagan and Mr. George Murphy, entered politics, and they've done extremely well. Since there has been no reciprocal tendency in the other direction, it suggests to me that our job is still more difficult than their new one.

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

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

45. 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?

46. This is a free country, madam. We have a right to share your privacy in a public place.

47. Basically I'm a very serious person, but I think the form it takes with me is comedy. I see the amusing side of all potentially pompous situations.

48. It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.

49. Toronto is a kind of New York operated by the Swiss.

50. 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.

51. 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.

52. The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves. ... Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.

53. 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.

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

55. The truth is an ambition which is beyond us.

56. 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.

57. Please keep off the grass.

58. People are annoyed with the Chinese for not respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult to have the same attitude to human rights.

59. 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.

60. I am an international citizen conceived in Russia, born in England, working in Hollywood, living in Switzerland, and touring the World.

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

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

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