Top 10 John Mortimer Quotes at QuotationFun

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Every family story from Greek drama to Hamlet to Cinderella is the story of the miseries which people inflict on each other in family life. Families are the scene of most murders, really. I've seen torture in family life. And if you make divorce difficult, it doesn't mean you force people to stay together - they just leave each other and don't get a divorce. 'Family values' is a sinister thing, really; all dictators, like Franco and Hitler, always talked about family values. Because it's the paternalistic state saying, you must do what you're told.

On Family Values:

Family

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I think women on the whole are much nicer companions.

On Women:

Women

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I have quite conservative feelings about lots of things, too. But it's a great mistake for politicians to talk about this, I think. Major did that. The conservatives suddenly started a great campaign about family values. And from then on, once a week, some conservative MP was found in bed with his secretary, or with three in a bed, or there was one man who was found sleeping with a male doctor on holiday - he said he was saving money, they only had to hire one room, there was a big row about that. Every week another minister had to resign for having an illegitimate child. And then they shut up about family values. Politicians are absolutely never the right people to talk about family values.

On Family Values:

Family, Money, Politics

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That's another great big error on the part of the government. Three years go they said there's absolutely no possibility that there's any danger of the mad cow getting into human beings. And three years ago the farm minister actually fed his little girl, on television, a beef burger. Now every time he pops up, all the newspaper men are running after him with a hamburger, saying, 'Eat this!' So now of course nobody believes a word the government says about this matter.

On Mad Cow Disease:

Government, Madness, Men

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Television is one of the few things that works well in this country. This must be why the government has decided to destroy it.

Government

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The doctor who makes a friend of his patients, the lawyer who defends death penalty cases in distant countries for no fee, the schoolteacher who opens a child's eyes to a new world of books and poetry - such people do nothing that can be measured in marketplaces. The greatest painters, composers and writers don't offer you choices, they present you with what only they can do, and you must take it or leave it. So when such subjects as the values of the marketplace are discussed, you will probably not have much to contribute. You can repeat a poem in your head and wait until the conversation is over. But if anyone starts talking about "level playing fields," get up and steal quietly from the room.

Death, Poetry, Author, Legal

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It was a really a very good way of life. I used to have breakfast with a murderer in his cell, lunch with a judge and dinner with an actress. It was a happy way of life.

Commenting on his writing of The Running Man 1963 and The Innocents 1961.

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If you can't sleep with your own wife wearing a false beard, what can you do?

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The three towering geniuses of European culture, Shakespeare, Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci were not allowed to appear on the euro note as they might, in their separate ways, cause offense: Mozart because he was a "womanizer," Shakespeare because he wrote The Merchant of Venice, a play judged to be anti-Semitic, and Leonardo because he was reported to fancy boys. Now the euro note carries a picture of a rather dull bridge.

Intelligence

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Are people naturally destructive, immoral, predatory and self-seeking, only to be kept in order by harsh laws and fiercely deterrent mandatory sentences? Or are men and women naturally orderly, merciful, humane and bred with a need for justice and mutual aid? ... when it comes to the law some sort of distinction can be drawn. Are you a Shylock or a Bassanio?

Men, Women, Legal

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