British Empire/decolonisation and Decline 1945%e2%80%931997

Famous quotes containing the words british, empire and/or decline:

    “There’s nothing the British like better than a bloke who comes from nowhere, makes it, and then gets clobbered.”
    —Melvyn Bragg (b. 1939)

    “I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
    —Gore Vidal (b. 1925)

    “I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
    —Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)