Alan Coren quotes

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear. (Alan Coren)

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms.

Alan Coren

I sometimes wonder if the manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

Alan Coren

Strictly speaking, the land does not exist; it is merely dehydrated sea.

Alan Coren

The Act of God designation on all insurance policies; which means, roughly, that you cannot be insured for the accidents that are most likely to happen to you.

Alan Coren

Since both its national products, snow and chocolate, melt, the cuckoo clock was invented solely in order to give tourists something solid to remember it by.

Alan Coren

Having lost the last war, they are currently enjoying a "Wirtschaftswunder," which can be briefly translated as "The best way to own a Mercedes is to build one."

Alan Coren

The word "souvenir" has, of course, slightly extended itself in meaning until it now denotes almost anything either breakable or useless; but even today, ninety per cent of the items covered by the word are forgettable objects in which cigarettes can be left to go stale.

Alan Coren

Ethnically, the Germans are Teutonic...being made up of Vandals, Gepidae, and Goths, all of whom emigrated - south from Sweden in about 500 BC; why they emigrated is not exactly clear, but many scholars believe it was because they saw the way Sweden was going, i. e. neutral.

Alan Coren

In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, I know one boy who won't be sweating. I intend to raise my coffin-lid briskly, throw a few things into an overnight bag, and, whistling something appropriate, prepare to meet my Maker.

Alan Coren

Disneyworld...is a historical reconstruction as sanitised as the Kremlin's, and a future vision as uncognisant of contemporary pointers as Peter Pan's. It is a magic carpet under which everything has been swept. (Alan Coren)

I rang room service, and asked for a bottle of Perrier, because while I was asleep someone had come in and carpeted my throat.

Alan Coren

Since Switzerland has nothing else to identify it...and since both its national products, snow and chocolate, melt, the cuckoo clock was invented solely in order to give tourists something solid to remember it by.

Alan Coren

Does not even the most sexually democratic of us, among which number I unquestionably count myself, not choke back the tiniest sob at the sight of poor old Denis stumbling along behind, struggling pitifully to hold his trilby on, as the PM strides across Goose Green with the wind managing only to make her hair look more Medusan, and the very mines praying she will not crush them under-heel?

Alan Coren

Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country is advocaat, a drink made from lawyers.

Alan Coren

A long, soft sigh, one of those very Italian sighs that express so much, that say "Ah, signor, if only this world were an ideal world, what would I not give to be able to do as you ask, we should sit together in the Tuscan sunshine, you and I, just two men together, and we should drink a bottle of the good red wine, and we should sing, ah, how we should sing."

Alan Coren