Peter Ustinov Quotes

I tell you, if you're in the front row of the parade and you stop walking, pretty soon you're back in the tuba section. And if you want to lead the parade you've got to keep moving.

My mother, Yolanda, was a little girl who never grew up, and sometimes we would laugh, and I would say things like, 'Okay, so now it looks like I am your mother and you are my daughter,' to which she would reply, 'Well, yes. Handle it and pamper me.'

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.

Once the referee throws the ball in the air, it's either your ball or their ball and you have to just take your shot.

If you never budge, don't expect a push.

You've got to make an effort on your own. Some people don't even try.

You can't just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream. You've got to get out there and make it happen for yourself.

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother - but... when she became our child, the affection came.

One of the turning points in the look of the Guardian is when we decided Logan Thackeray would be a Guardian as opposed to a Warrior. Logan's own protective nature and the fact that the humans have been knocked back into defensive positions informed a lot of what the Guardian became.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not only the engine but the caboose. I have to be in the front car and pull forward, and at the same time run around behind and push everybody along with me.

Normally, I'm the one fawning over the man, but in 'Call The Midwife,' I'm the experienced woman.

Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.

Nobody criticised me when we qualified for the World Cup when I decided that the best shape for us going forward was three men at the back and stretching the pitch width-wise, which gives you options.

Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist.

... we had a secret weapon—no alternative.

Don’t tell me that it is tough. It is at least as tough as you think it is. But what is the alternative? It is to do nothing?

Fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks.

It was always the cliche of men leaving their wives for younger women. The playing field is sort of even now. Women make their own salaries. They can do the exact same thing and can have a younger man.

If you're always waiting for a producer to hire you... your chances are really, really small. I've been knocking on doors and asking for a job for many years, and my career really changed when I decided to create my own material.

My greatest defense was my offense. Very few guys did that.

They say that the best form of defence is attack, but maybe I have to take a look at how I defend.

I don't like to stand there and wait until the ball comes to my feet. I like to take the ball and run with it.

If I had to wait around for somebody to pick me for lieutenant governor, I never would have been picked.

The next big project, you yourself have to conceive.

When I was younger, I thought that everything would just come to me eventually, but now I see I have to take the initiative and practise to improve myself.