94 Quotes by George Mikes

On the Continent there is one topic which should be avoided-the weather; in England, if you do not repeat the phrase “Lovely day, isn’t it?” at least two hundred times a day, you are considered a bit dull.

It is often said that the Japanese are extremely clean at home, or inside any house or office, but dirty and untidy outside. ‘Go and look at a railway station,’ I was told, ‘and you’ll be horrified.’ I went and was horrified; horrified by the cleanliness of the place.

Australians are decent people with the right instincts and they wish everybody well; but if all is not well, it is none of their business and they will not lose too much sleep over it. The shrug of the shoulders has become – only temporarily, I daresay – the national gesture of Australia.

The British suffer from a most unfortunate superiority complex – unjustified even under Victoria and most certainly hopelessly out-of-date today.

Foreigners have souls; the English haven’t.

American radio is the reverse of the Shakespearean stage. In Shakespeare’s time the world’s greatest dramas were acted with the most primitive technical arrangements; on the American air the world’s most primitive writing is performed under perfect technical conditions.

Long before the word Zionism was uttered for the first time, old religious Jews came from all over the world to die in Jerusalem. It is the finest place to die in – it has always been acknowledged. It has a joie de mourir quite its own.

Although the rudiments of snobbery are there, its finer developments are basically alien to the Australian soul – that is, if Australians have a soul; many people believe that they are too matter-of-fact and down-to-earth to have such fancy commodities.

While all this goes on, the English remain staunch believers in equality. Equality is a notion the English have given to humanity. Equality means that you are just as good as the next man but the next man is not half as good as you are.