Boris Johnson Quotes & Sayings

Churchill decides from very early on that he will create a political position that is somehow above left and right, embodying the best points of both sides and thereby incarnating the will of the nation. He thinks of himself as a gigantic keystone in the arch, with all the lesser stones logically induced to support his position. He has a kind of semi-ideology to go with it - a leftish Toryism: imperialist, romantic, but on the side of the working man. — Boris Johnson

It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in Watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird. — Boris Johnson

The mayors fund for London will be a streamlined vehicle for getting money from the wealth creating sector to communities across London that are facing hardship and deprivation and are the victims of crime. — Boris Johnson

Can I say anything good about Ken Livinstone? A long time ago he did some good things, but I can't now remember what any of them were. — Boris Johnson

Take the one about the time he was sitting next to a clean-living Methodist bishop - at a reception, allegedly, in Canada - when a good-looking young waitress came up and offered them both a glass of sherry from a tray. Churchill took one. But the bishop said, 'Young lady, I would rather commit adultery than take an intoxicating beverage.' At which point Churchill beckoned the girl, and said, 'Come back, lassie, I didn't know we had a choice. — Boris Johnson

If you turn a blind eye to fare evasion, if you accustom people to getting away with minor crime, you are making it more likely that they will go on to commit more serious crimes. That is why we have so much disorder in London. It is a disgrace. — Boris Johnson

I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest. — Boris Johnson

Never in my life did I think I would be congratulated by Mick Jagger for achieving anything. — Boris Johnson

I'm no communist.I'm a tax cutting Conservative. But I want a capitalism that is fairer to forgotten people. — Boris Johnson

I think people have a legitimate right to minimise their tax obligations if they can, but they should pay their fair whack. I do think it's important to be transparent. — Boris Johnson

London is the most commercially important city in Europe, and it's the most populous city. It should be for the whole of the European continent what New York is to America. That's what it should be. — Boris Johnson

It just happens I write fast and always have done. — Boris Johnson

I want to offer particular congratulations to Andrea Leadsom on her stunning achievement. She is now well placed to win and replace the absurd gloom in some quarters with a positive, confident and optimistic approach, not just to Europe, but to government all round. — Boris Johnson

We need to look at our nannying, mollycoddled, politically correct culture in my view, which stops kids from going out and playing competitive sport. I also think we need to look at the shear fatness of the regulations which control people who want to help kids play sport. — Boris Johnson

I've always sort of thought that politics was a high and noble calling and a good thing to do. — Boris Johnson

Some people play the piano, some do Sudoku, some watch television, some people go out to dinner parties. I write books. — Boris Johnson

My hero is the mayor in Jaws. He's a fantastic guy, and he keeps the beaches open, if you remember, even after it's demonstrated that his constituents have been eaten by this killer fish. Of course, he was proved catastrophically wrong in his judgment, but his instincts were right.'
Boris Johnson is the mayor of London.
Taken from Time Magazine interview: June 25, 2012; page 76. — Boris Johnson

When lorry drivers come up behind me and I'm cycling, innocently keeping to my side of the road, and they decide because they are so big, and their lorry is so powerful, and they just want to clear me out of the road, and they hoot aggressively, then I do see red a bit. I do. — Boris Johnson

The euro has become a means by which superior German productivity is able to gain an absolutely unbeatable advantage over the whole eurozone territory. — Boris Johnson

I suppose with houses and assets, then I guess I would be a millionaire. But so are a lot of people. — Boris Johnson

All the people I talk to, increasingly, can see that the emperor has got no clothes. The case for leaving [the EU] is now overwhelming. — Boris Johnson

Since January 1993 there have been 27 other countries not in the EU that have done better than the UK at exporting goods into the single market. — Boris Johnson

I'm not one of those people who believes in going endlessly around finger wagging and ticking people off for occasional colourful use of language. — Boris Johnson

You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth - and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, and now we have to get French or Korean scientists to help us build nuclear power stations. We perfected the finest cars on earth - and now Rolls-Royce is in the hands of the Germans. Whatever we invent, from the jet engine to the internet, we find that someone else carts it off and makes a killing from it elsewhere. — Boris Johnson

I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around. — Boris Johnson

When Cameron's Conservatives come to power it will be a golden age for cyclists and an Elysium of cycle lanes, bike racks, and sharia law for bike thieves. And I hope that cycling in London will become almost Chinese in its ubiquity. — Boris Johnson

The next Tory leader would have to unify his party and ensure that Britain stood tall in the world. — Boris Johnson

I believe in immigration. But I feel people think it would be better if there was an Australian-style points based system so we could actually get a good system. — Boris Johnson

I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis. — Boris Johnson

[People] are woefully underestimating this country and what it can achieve. — Boris Johnson

I love swimming in rivers, and well remember once jumping in at Chiswick. — Boris Johnson

Try as I might, I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth profit matrix and stay conscious. — Boris Johnson

We did everything we could to break down barriers that restrain poorest. — Boris Johnson

Most people would accept that people come to London from across the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, and are accepted here irrespective of their origins. — Boris Johnson

The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition. — Boris Johnson

The beauty and riddle in studying the motives of any politician is in trying to decide what is idealism and what is self-interest; and often we are left to conclude that the answer is a mixture of the two. — Boris Johnson

Life isn't like coursework, baby. It's one damn essay crisis after another. — Boris Johnson

Remind me: who was the greater mass murderer, Stalin or Hitler? Well, Stalin is thought to have been responsible for about 50 million deaths, and Hitler for a mere 25 million. What Hitler did in his concentration camps was equalled if not exceeded in foulness by the Soviet gulags, forced starvation and pogroms. What makes the achievements of communist Russia so special and different, that you can simper around in a CCCP T-shirt, while anyone demented enough to wear anything commemorating the Third Reich would be speedily banged away under the 1986 Public Order Act? — Boris Johnson

But if people want to swim in the Thames, if they want to take their lives into their own hands, then they should be able to do so with all the freedom and exhilaration of our woad-painted ancestors. — Boris Johnson

I am hoping very much to get re-elected but it is going to be a tough fight. — Boris Johnson

That is the best case for Bush; that, among other things, he liberated Iraq. It is good enough for me. — Boris Johnson

The key thing is to be "Conservative in principle but Liberal in sympathy". — Boris Johnson

Lear's daughters and their loathsome husbands are all deservedly slaughtered for their ill treatment of an aged ruler (one of the reasons that tragedy remains so huge in Asia) — Boris Johnson

It's not reasonable for companies that have chief executives and board members who are paid very considerable sums to subsidise low pay through in-work benefits. — Boris Johnson

It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall. — Boris Johnson

My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive. — Boris Johnson

Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff. — Boris Johnson

Andrea Leadsom, I think, has all the qualities that you need at the moment. She's got a lot of zap, a lot of drive, and all the experience. Plus I think she can articulate what's needed at the moment, which is a bit of an antidote to some of the gloom and negativity and misunderstanding about what the Brexit vote means. — Boris Johnson

If we vote to Leave and take back control, all sorts of opportunities open up. Including doing new free trade deals around the world, restoring Britain's seat on all sorts of international bodies, restoring health to our democracy and belief to our democracy. — Boris Johnson

He is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has lost the family silver at roulette, and who now decides to double up by betting the house as well. — Boris Johnson

If we get outside the EU, if we leave the EU system, we will be relieved of a huge amount of unnecessary regulation that is holding this country back. We will be able to set our own priorities, make our own laws and set our own tax policies to suit the needs of this country. We have a huge opportunity also to make people's votes count for more. — Boris Johnson

We need to remember that we can't compete endlessly with other nations that set their income taxes substantially lower than ours. They will attract jobs, and investment. They may generate more tax - and they may even persuade their tennis champs to run that extra half yard — Boris Johnson

Augustine said he wept more for the death of Dido than he did for the death of his own saviour. What about Book Four, the best book of the best poem of the best poet? — Boris Johnson

These days we dimly believe that the Second World War was won with Russian blood and American money; and though that is in some ways true, it is also true that, without Churchill, Hitler would almost certainly have won. — Boris Johnson

I cant remember what my line on drugs is. Whats my line on drugs? — Boris Johnson

It is easy to make promises - it is hard work to keep them. — Boris Johnson

The idea that the EU is somehow the guarantor of peace on the continent - that is in itself rash, in my view, and risks undermining the vital role of Nato. — Boris Johnson

My speaking style was criticised by no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a low moment, my friends, to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg. — Boris Johnson

There's an idea that London is a planet on its own: that it's starting to diverge from the rest of the solar system. We need to combat that. — Boris Johnson

(Never in the field of human conflict has) So much been owed by So many to So few. If you want a classic ascending tricolon, then try his peerless line from 1942, after the victory at El Alamein. Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. When he uncorks this one at the — Boris Johnson

This is a super masticated subject, and it is time to spit it out. — Boris Johnson

If gay marriage was OK ... then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog. — Boris Johnson

London is the sporting capital of the world. I say to the Chinese and I say to the world, ping pong is coming home. — Boris Johnson

My ideal world is, we're there, we're in the EU, trying to make it better. — Boris Johnson

If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn't ever get anywhere. — Boris Johnson

I want you to know that I have nothing against Orlando, though you are, of course, far more likely to get shot or robbed there than in London. — Boris Johnson

I have come to the conclusion that Tony Blair has finally gone mad ... he made assertions that are so jaw-droppingly and breathtakingly at variance with reality that he surely needs professional psychiatric help. — Boris Johnson

I think the risks that people see of terrorism are incredibly important but we are very confident we have got the right people on it and the risks have been minimised. — Boris Johnson

There must be room in our world for eccentricity, even if it offends the prudes, and room for the vague other-worldliness that often goes with genius. — Boris Johnson

I think it is going to be wonderful. I went to the Paralympics in Beijing and have seen how brilliant the sport is at first hand. People are going to love it. It is going to change people's attitudes to Paralympians and it is going to be a great show. — Boris Johnson

I do think human beings cannot be faulted for wishing to judge themselves and their lives and their achievements by others around them; that is a natural human feeling. — Boris Johnson

I'm made up of immigrant stock. I went to a primary school in London. I grew up eating Spangles, why shouldn't I be as well placed to speak for Londoners as anyone else? — Boris Johnson

I want to win and I want to be in office. — Boris Johnson

I dont see why people are so snooty about Channel Five. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap-dancing, and other related and vital subjects — Boris Johnson

Volunteering is also now more crucial than ever in helping people find work. — Boris Johnson

Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It's time for a rethink, and the Tory party - the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth - is where it's happening. — Boris Johnson

He is the resounding human rebuttal to all Marxist historians who think history is the story of vast and impersonal economic forces. The point of the Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the difference. — Boris Johnson

It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time. — Boris Johnson

London is a fantastic creator of jobs - but many of these jobs are going to people who don't originate in this country. — Boris Johnson

My point is that this Potter business has legs. It will run and run, and we must be utterly mad, as a country, to leave it to the Americans to make money from a great British invention. I appeal to the children of this country and to their Potter-fiend parents to write to Warner Bros and Universal, and perhaps, even, to the great J K herself. Bring Harry home to Britain - and if you want a site with less rainfall than Rome, with excellent public transport, and strong connections to Harry Potter, I have just the place. — Boris Johnson

There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge. — Boris Johnson

When my father began his work in the 1970s it was a very different EU. I pay tribute to what he did. But it has now become a very different proposition: the United States of Europe. — Boris Johnson

I want London to be the most cycle-friendly city on Earth, and I want more people to be happy and safe on bicycles. — Boris Johnson

The meat in the sausage has got to be Conservative. — Boris Johnson

We are experiencing such large support for the Olympic relay that our advice is to stay in your neighbourhood, stay in your borough and wait for it to come near you. — Boris Johnson

I promised to run the most open and transparent administration in Britain. That is why, with this brutally honest and unprecedented progress report, I am determined to level with Londoners. — Boris Johnson

What I really think about Banksy is I think he's a genius; he's a great artist, and I like his stuff. But he's got to accept it if, from time to time, someone will need to paint over his work. — Boris Johnson

Hitler showed the evil that could be done by the art of rhetoric. Churchill showed how it could help to save humanity. It has been said that the difference between Hitler's speeches and Churchill's speeches was that Hitler made you think he could do anything; Churchill made you think you could do anything. — Boris Johnson

Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power. — Boris Johnson

The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run out of better ideas. — Boris Johnson

If I'd been on the Remain side I would have tried to have seen the best in Europe and tried to explain that. Instead, what they've done is endlessly try and talk up what they see as the weaknesses of Britain and they aren't there. That's a total mistake. — Boris Johnson

Cybele, or the Great Mother - Magna Mater. This Cybele was supposed to have conceived a passion for a young man named Atys, and when Atys failed to respond to her advances, she became jealous. When she caught him having it off with someone else, she drove him so mad that he castrated himself. I am afraid that respectable young Londoners had celebrated their devotion to Magna Mater by doing the same - and we know this for sure because the river near London Bridge has also yielded a fearful set of serrated forceps, adorned with the heads of Eastern divinities. — Boris Johnson

The Geiger-counter of Olympomania is going to go zoink off the scale, — Boris Johnson

Times have been tough, the economy has been tough. But I want to bring forward a fantastic manifesto for taking the city forwards. — Boris Johnson

I think it's absolutely amazing and how the Remain side have the cheek to come and tell us that we improve our security by staying in this organisation I do not understand. — Boris Johnson

There are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters. — Boris Johnson

Humanity would have plunged into a new dark age of absolutely frightening and appalling characteristics without Churchill. — Boris Johnson

I always believe writing is an indispensable part of one's political armoury. — Boris Johnson

First Lord of the Admiralty, long enough to engineer what an anti-Churchillian would say was an epic and unparalleled military disaster - a feat of incompetent generalship that made the Charge of the Light Brigade look positively slick. It was an attempt to outflank the stalemate on the Western Front that not only ended in humiliation for the British armed forces; it cost the lives of so many Australians and New Zealanders that to this day their 1915 expedition to Turkey is the number-one source of pom-bashing and general anti-British feeling among Antipodeans. — Boris Johnson

unique understanding — Boris Johnson