George Mikes Quotes

The Japanese have become so smitten with the Western condiment - its texture as silky as a kimono, its tang as understated as the tang of Zen - that today they have a word for mayonnaise junkie: mayora.

Almost a century has passed since Japan first entered the world community by concluding a treaty of amity with the United States of America in 1854.

No matter how one looks at it, Japanese are superior to Americans in every respect. But as a group, we are inferior to them. So from now on we must have group training, foster science, and the entire nation must labor hard to construct a new better Japan than today.

It is always upon the spirit that I lay stress. The world should know more about our spirit, for the world has tended to ignore Asiatic civilization. I am firmly convinced that the fundamentals of Asiatic civilization are just as good as the European

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.

The U.S. and Japan are scared of us catching up, and they will do anything to contain China's development …

Even though China was a very closed country, they thought of themselves as the center of the world. It is an ethnic characteristic. After I went to Japan, I had a totally different view. The Japanese are always talking about what the Western world is doing. There is the anxious feeling of an outsider.

American and French culture are really, really different, but in a way it's funny.

The method (of learning Japanese) recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan. And even then it's not easy.

It was decided almost two hundred years ago that English should be the language spoken in the United States. It is not known, however, why this decision has not been carried out.

The Japanese tend to be far more co-operative and docile and group-oriented. It would be easier to get the entire population of Tokyo to wear matching outfits than to get any two randomly selected Americans to agree on pizza toppings.

... still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine.

Rock and roll is catching on all over . . . France . . . England . . . They even have it in Japan, only over there they call it judo.

The help (in Japan) is very polite. They bow so much, you don't know which end to talk to.

Japan has a low crime rate, unless you count the fact that approximately every fifteen minutes the entire Cabinet gets indicted for taking bribes.

The service at the Imperial (Tokyo) is the finest I've encountered anywhere. There was a button next to my bed marked ROOM SERVICE - and a maid to press it for me.

I have read that, on the average, the Japanese are getting taller, but at the moment they seem to be about the same height as American junior-high-school students, only with fewer guns.

One of the first sights that shocked me, when I came to Israel in 1921, was an Arab turning over a field with a very primitive plow; pulling the plow were an ox and a woman. Now, if it means that we have destroyed this romantic picture by bringing in tractors, combines, and threshing machines, this is true: we have.

The Japanese are human beings like the rest of us, but they will strongly resent this insinuation.

The Russians could have some (warheads) aimed at Japan, so if we act up they can destroy our economy.

Flying from the United States to Tokyo takes approximately as long as law school.

Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with.

Tokyo cab drivers are all ex-kamikaze pilots.

Tokyo is huge. Something like 15 million people live there, and my estimate is that at any given moment, 14.7 million of them are lost.

Japan is our rival, not our enemy. Japan is a competitor... Bashing a Toyota won't make a better car.