He was two times Academy Award-winning film actor, director, writer, journalist, and raconteur. He wrote and directed many acclaimed stage plays and led numerous international theatrical productions. He made a stellar film career as actor, director, and writer, appearing in more than 100 film and television productions. He was awarded two Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, one for his role in Spartacus (1960) and one for his role in Topkapi (1964). Ustinov’s effortless style, his expertise in dialectal and physical comedy made him a regular guest of numerous talk shows and late night comedians. His witty and multi-dimensional humor was legendary, and he later published a collection of his jokes and quotations, summarizing his wide popularity as a raconteur. He was also an internationally acclaimed TV journalist.
(1921 – 2004)
– Peter Ustinov Quotes –
The French and the British are such good enemies that they can’t resist being friends.
~ Peter Ustinov
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.
~ Peter Ustinov
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.
~ Peter Ustinov
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
~ Peter Ustinov
People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven’t got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.
~ Peter Ustinov
I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
~ Peter Ustinov
Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.
~ Peter Ustinov
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.
~ Peter Ustinov
The point of living and of being an optimist is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.
~ Peter Ustinov
The truth is an ambition which is beyond us.
~ Peter Ustinov
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
~ Peter Ustinov
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.
~ Peter Ustinov
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done.
~ Peter Ustinov
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
~ Peter Ustinov
Men think about women. Women think about what men think about them.
~ Peter Ustinov
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
~ Peter Ustinov
Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.
~ Peter Ustinov
Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
~ Peter Ustinov
Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.
~ Peter Ustinov
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
~ Peter Ustinov
The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.
~ Peter Ustinov
I have four children which is not bad considering I’m not a Catholic.
~ Peter Ustinov
The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.
~ Peter Ustinov
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.
~ Peter Ustinov
The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.
~ Peter Ustinov
By increasing the size of the keyhole, today’s playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
~ Peter Ustinov
I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.
~ Peter Ustinov
Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.
~ Peter Ustinov
Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.
~ Peter Ustinov
I am an international citizen conceived in Russia, born in England, working in Hollywood, living in Switzerland, and touring the World.
~ Peter Ustinov
