Peter Ustinov

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.

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

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

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

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

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

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

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.

The truth is an ambition which is beyond us.

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

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

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

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

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

I have four children which is not bad considering I’m not a Catholic.

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

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.

Corruption is nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

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

Men think about women. Women think about what men think about them.

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

Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique.

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

The French and the British are such good enemies that they can’t resist being friends.

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.

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

I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

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

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

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

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

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.

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

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

The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.

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

Books, I don’t know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can’t for the life of me see why people have to write them.

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

Monica Seles: I’d hate to be next door to her on her wedding night.