David Cannadine Quotes

QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.

The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.

The nation of the West-Saxons do not allow a queen to sit beside the king, nor to be called a queen, but only the king's wife …. all the nobles of that land swore together, that they would never let any king reign over them, who should attempt to place a queen on the throne by his side.

The head of England is a woman, and quite young, and all orders come from her.

Over the years to come, one thing is for certain: if the monarchy wishes to stay relevant and in power, it will have to change more.

The monarchy is so extraordinarily useful. When Britain wins a battle she shouts, God save the Queen; when she loses, she votes down the prime minister.

Monarchs not only fashion their age, but are fashioned by it, so that they can become a sort of personification of the age. If Elizabeth I, independent, strong, represents the age of Shakespeare's heroines, a woman's heyday, Victoria represents another image of womanhood, predominant in the nineteenth century: a woman who, although queen in her own right, leaned on her husband, looked up to him, and went into perpetual mourning after his death. The feminist movement filled her with shocked horror and outrage.

Viserys sold my mother's crown, and men called him a beggar. I shall keep this one, so men will call me a queen. (Daenerys)

If the writer is a woman, feminist or not, it will give the language something that it would not have if it had been used by a man.

Only those of us, I think, who were born under Queen Victoria know what it feels like to assume, without questioning, that England is permanently top nation, that foreigners do not matter, and that if the worst comes to the worst, Lord Salisbury will send a gunboat.

I'm just getting better and better. It's just like a bunch of worker bees protecting the king bee, because I'm not a queen bee. I'm a king bee.

Woman is, by habit or nature, queen of the household. She is not designed to organize on a large scale.

A lot of the early songs I wrote were about the experience of going to London and meeting rent boys and transvestites and drag queens. A lot of my early material is that: the wide-eyed adventures of a middle-class boy.

The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable role with the promise of rewards -- material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the garden of Eden.

Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should.

To be a princess is to play at life. To be a queen is to be a serious player...The purpose of life as a woman is to ascend to the throne and rule with heart.

Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers.

India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before.

To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said 'I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head. Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be, Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me.

It's a sort of piss-take on culture, because a drag queen is a clown - a parody of our society. It's a sarcastic spoof on culture, which allows us to laugh at ourselves - but in a way that is inclusive of everyone.

I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England - or the Queen - and have the real business of the presidency conducted by ... a city manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years.

Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king.

If I hadn't been a woman, I'd have been a drag queen

If the Queen can reject the advice of a minister on a little thing like a postage stamp, what would happen if she rejected the advice of the Prime Minister on a major matter? If the Crown personally can reject advice, then, of course, the whole democratic facade turns out to be false

When I was growing up, the really, really cool super heroes were all male - so I wanted to be them.