John Mortimer quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John Mortimer

John Mortimer Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from John Mortimer on Wise Famous Quotes.

A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.

Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.

Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.

The greatest horrors of our world, from the executions in Iran to the brutalities of the IRA, are committed by people who are totally sincere

The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.

We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

She who must be obeyed, by Horace Rumpole character

There is always time for failure.

She believed that, in an ideal world, the working class would rule the country, but she had no particular desire to ask any of them to tea.

I sent out words like soldiers to battle and they never returned.

No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.

Loyalty to the school to which your parents pay to send you seemed to me like feeling loyalty to Selfridges.

All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.

Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.

We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.

The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed.

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.

Soapy Sam looked as though he had just sat down on a favourite armchair which had gone missing.

The only rule I have found to have any validity is writing is not to bore yourself.

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own.

I don't think you ever feel a success really because everything could always be done better than you've done it ...

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.

The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper.

The freedom to make a fortune on the stock exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.

Rumpole, you must move with the times."
"If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.

Success is good for the character.

It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.

What on earth was Henry talking about?'
'His soul. I wonder where he keeps it.