Peter Ustinov Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us

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

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

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

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

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

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

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

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.