Quote

It is a standing source of astonishment and amusement to visitors that the British Museum has so few British things in it: that it is a museum about the world as seen from Britain rather than a history focused on these islands.

Because of the long, long history of British shipping, immigration, trade, empire, missionaries, you can have a better shot at telling a worldwide story in the British Museum's collection than any other. Britain has been more connected with the rest of the world than any other country, for longer.

We don't need to chase a nostalgic rendering of Britain as it never was and never can be: we need instead an understanding of who we really are and what a happy, prosperous, just nation might look like.

Americans are always mortified when I tell them this, but in England, it's a tradition to put your plaques and photographs and awards and gold records and stuff in your bathroom. I don't know why.

London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.

It is important never to forget our history, but parts of our history are more appropriately displayed in museums, not on government property.

While there is a great value in things that are old, it seems that the overwhelming challenge in Britain in the late 20th century is to make every effort to see value in the contemporary and in the future.

The British Museum was founded with a civic purpose: to allow the citizen, through reasoned inquiry and comparison, to resist the certainties that endanger free society and are still among the greatest threats to our liberty.

Museums are like the quiet car of the world. It's a place you can come to escape, where there's authenticity, there's uniqueness, there's calm, there's physicality.