“It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I just beat people up.” — Muhammad Ali

“How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over 200 varieties of cheese?” — Charles de Gaulle

Controversial remarks attributed to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh:

• “If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
• When visiting China in 1986, he told a group of British students, “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”
• To a British student in Papua New Guinea: “You managed not to get eaten then?”
• To a Scottish driving instructor: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough for them to pass the driving test?”
• On a visit to the new Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, he told a group of deaf children standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band, “Deaf? No wonder you are deaf, standing so close to that racket.”
• To an Australian aborigine: “Still throwing spears?”
• To the president of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional Muslim robes: “You look like you’re ready for bed.”
• Seeing a poorly installed fusebox in an Edinburgh factory, Philip said it looked “like it was put in by an Indian.”
• When a 12-year-old boy told the prince that he aspired to be an astronaut, he replied, “You’re too fat.”

Overheard during an extended tour of HMS Boxer: “Not another fucking chamber.”

“No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.” — Mikhail Baryshnikov

“An ugly baby is a very nasty object, and the prettiest is frightful when undressed.” — Queen Victoria

“Working with Julie Andrews is like being hit over the head with a valentine card.” — Christopher Plummer