Peter Ustinov

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

The lack of a personal core is at the base of such men, the inability to support doubt in any form, the fear of facing themselves...

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.

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

Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

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

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

Bildung ist wichtig, vor allem wenn es gilt, Vorurteile abzubauen. Wenn man schon ein Gefangener seines eigenen Geistes ist, kann man wenigstens dafür sorgen, dass die Zelle anständig möbliert ist.

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

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

Unfortunately, a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares

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

If history teaches us one thing, than that history teaches us nothing.

Like pornographers fretting under the burden of their wish dreams, these obscene buffoons suddenly found it unnecessary to assuage their fever among the pages of forbidden books or to pay for relief in some bordello, because a government of lonely fanatics swept into power and gradually lent official sanction to the dirtiest, saddest aspects of human nature, the lack of imagination which leads the ill to put their most libidinous nightmares into practice.

To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.