Peter Ustinov (1921-2004)

Quotes

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

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

• Did you know that every two hours the nations of this world spend as much on armaments as they spend on the children of this world every year?

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

• Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 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.