“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.”

—  George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him." by George Bernard Shaw?
George Bernard Shaw photo
George Bernard Shaw 413
Irish playwright 1856–1950

Related quotes

W. S. Gilbert photo

“He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it,
And it's greatly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!.

For he might have been a Rooshian
A French or Turk or Proosian,
Or perhaps Itali-an.
But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Englishman (from HMS Pinafore).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

William Makepeace Thackeray photo

“How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!”

William Makepeace Thackeray book Pendennis

Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Louis Kronenberger photo

“The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a good guy.”

Louis Kronenberger (1904–1980) American critic and writer

Source: Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954), p. 120.

Ethan Allen photo

“There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Retort attributed to Allen, during his captivity among the British, commenting after a picture of Washington was hung in a outhouse, in an anecdote told by Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Lincoln, Vol. 1 (1996) by David Herbert Donald; the documentation on this is scanty, and it conceivably arose as a comical anecdote as early as Lincoln's time.
Variants:
It is most appropriately hung. There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.
As quoted in Strange But True, America : Weird Tales from All 50 States (2004) by John Hafnor, p. 114
It is most appropriately hung, nothing ever made the British shit like the sight of George Washington.
Disputed

W. S. Gilbert photo

“In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)
Source: 1878, HMS Pinafore, act 2, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 354 (2005)

E.M. Forster photo

“I know very well how limited and how open to criticism, English freedom is. It is race-bound and it's class-bound. It means freedom for the Englishman, but not for the subject-races of his Empire. If you invite the average Englishman to share his liberties with the inhabitants of India or Kenya, he will reply, "Never," if he is a Tory, and "Not until I consider them worthy" if he is a Liberal.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"Liberty In England", Speech (June 21, 1935), reprinted in Abinger Harvest (1936).

Nick Hornby photo

“By the early seventies I had become an Englishman — that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do.”

Nick Hornby Fever Pitch

Fever Pitch (1992)

Stanley Baldwin photo

“The Englishman is made for a time of crisis, and for a time of emergency. He is serene in difficulties, but may seem to be indifferent when times are easy. He may not look ahead, he may not heed warnings, he may not prepare, but when he once starts he is persistent to the death, and he is ruthless in action. It is these gifts that have made the Englishman what he is, and that have enabled the Englishman to make England and the Empire what it is.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 3-4.
1924

Willa Cather photo

“From the time the Englishman's bones harden into bones at all, he makes his skeleton a flagstaff, and he early plants his feet like one who is to walk the world and the decks of all the seas.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

16 September 1902
Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 14

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“The very phrase "foreign affairs" makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 531.

Related topics