Quotes By Peter Ustinov

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

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

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

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.

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

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

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

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

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

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

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

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.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

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

The truth is an ambition which is beyond us.

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.