Politics & Power Quote by Malcolm Bradbury

Bradbury’s line lands because it weaponizes a compliment: “polite” becomes a cultural disguise, not a moral virtue. The joke isn’t simply that one nation fibs and the other blurts. It’s that each society has built a different etiquette system for managing friction, status, and shame - and each system flatters itself as decency.

“The English are polite by telling lies” points to a social order that prizes smoothness over clarity. The “lie” here is rarely a grand deception; it’s the soft-focus language of understatement, the careful vagueness that keeps conflict from becoming explicit and keeps everyone’s position intact. Politeness becomes a kind of social lubricant, but also a quiet instrument of exclusion: if you don’t speak the code, you don’t belong.

“The Americans are polite by telling the truth” flips the stereotype of American bluntness into a self-image: directness as respect. Say what you mean, don’t waste time, don’t patronize. Yet Bradbury’s edge is that this “truth” can be its own performance, a way to claim moral high ground while bulldozing nuance. Candor becomes an alibi: if you’re offended, that’s your problem, because I was “just being honest.”

As a British novelist who spent serious time observing the U.S. (and writing sharply about campus and transatlantic life), Bradbury is diagnosing two national mythologies. Both define politeness as virtue while quietly serving power: one through omission, the other through assertion. The line works because it refuses to pick a winner; it suggests we’re all managing discomfort - just with different scripts.