Quotes By Peter Ustinov

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique.

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

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

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.

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

The French and the British are such good enemies that they can't resist being friends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

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.

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