Peter Ustinov
“If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.”
“To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.”
“The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.”
“Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom.”
“Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.”
“Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.”
“Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.”
“Basically I'm a very serious person, but I think the form it takes with me is comedy.”
“Sex is a conversation carried out by other means.”
“By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.”
“In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.”
“I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant.”
“I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilized music in the world.”
“Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our one duty is to furnish it well.”
“To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.”
“It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.”
“If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.”
“Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.”
“Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.”
“Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.”