Boris Johnson (Politician)

Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.

— Boris Johnson sin

Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase… Indeed, high Chinese culture and art are almost all imitative of western forms: Chinese concert pianists are technically brilliant, but brilliant at Schubert and Rachmaninov. Chinese ballerinas dance to the scores of Diaghilev. The number of Chinese Nobel prizes won on home turf is zero, although there are of course legions of bright Chinese trying to escape to Stanford and Caltech… It is hard to think of a single Chinese sport at the Olympics, compared with umpteen invented by Britain, including ping-pong, I’ll have you know, which originated at upper-class dinner tables and was first called whiff-whaff. The Chinese have a script so fiendishly complicated that they cannot produce a proper keyboard for it.

— Boris Johnson art

The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more... Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. ... the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right... If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited... The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.

— Boris Johnson time

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 love

The proposed ban on incitement to “religious hatred” makes no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself; and that would be pretty absurd, when you consider that the Bill's intention is to fight Islamophobia.

— Boris Johnson men

Ok, I said to myself as I sighted the bird down the end of the gun. This time, my fine feathered friend, there is no escape.

— Boris Johnson time

Not even Mr Blair has been able to erode the unions conviction that we all have a “right” to a minimum wage… Both the minimum wage and the Social Charter would palpably destroy jobs.

— Boris Johnson art

Labour's appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it.

— Boris Johnson sex

Not only did I want Bush to win, but we threw the entire weight of The Spectator behind him.

— Boris Johnson win

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

— Boris Johnson good

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

— Boris Johnson power

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

— Boris Johnson growth

But here's old Ken - he's been crass, he's been insensitive and thuggish and brutal in his language - but I don't think actually if you read what he said, although it was extraordinary and rude, I don't think he was actually anti-Semitic.

— Boris Johnson language

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 love

I'm having Sunday lunch with my family. I'm vigorously campaigning, inculcating my children in the benefits of a Tory government.

— Boris Johnson family

Howard is a dynamic performer on many levels. There you are. He sent me to Liverpool. Marvellous place. Howard was the most effective Home Secretary since Peel. Hang on, was Peel Home Secretary?

— Boris Johnson war

What we hate, what we fear, is being ignored.

— Boris Johnson fear

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 time

I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. 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 time

We are confident in our story and will be fighting this all the way. I am very sorry that Alastair Campbell has taken this decision but I can see that he got his tits in the wringer.

— Boris Johnson story

Nor do I propose to defend the right to talk on a mobile while driving a car, though I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on.

— Boris Johnson reading

I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil.

— Boris Johnson evil

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

— Boris Johnson chance

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

— Boris Johnson truth

Theare not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition.

— Boris Johnson wit

Any seat would be mad not to take him. He's a terrific chap.

— Boris Johnson sea

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

— Boris Johnson man

As snow-jobs go, this beats the Himalayas.

— Boris Johnson ya

Some readers will no doubt say that a devil is inside me; and though my faith is a bit like Magic FM in the Chilterns, in that the signal comes and goes, I can only hope that isn't so.

— Boris Johnson hope

If Amsterdam or Leningrad vie for the title of Venice of the North, then Venice - what compliment is high enough? Venice, with all her civilisation and ancient beauty, Venice with her addiction to curious aquatic means of transport, yes, my friends, Venice is the Henley of the South.

— Boris Johnson beauty

He's lost the plot, people tell me. He's drifting rudderless in the wide Sargasso Sea of New Labour's ideological vacuum.

— Boris Johnson people

Look the point is ... er, what is the point? It is a tough job but somebody has got to do it.

— Boris Johnson body

It was a stellar performance. I may as well give up now and make way for an older man.

— Boris Johnson man

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 art

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 good

I didn't see it, but it sounds barbaric. It's become like cock-fighting: poor dumb brutes being set upon each other by conniving television producers.

— Boris Johnson vision

I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel.

— Boris Johnson people

I advise you all very strongly - go for a run, get some exercise, and have a beautiful day.

— Boris Johnson beautiful

Tremendous, little short of superb. On cracking form.

— Boris Johnson men

Nothing excites compassion, in friend and foe alike, as much as the sight of you ker-splonked on the Tarmac with your propeller buried six feet under.

— Boris Johnson passion

My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.

— Boris Johnson friends

I can't remember what my line on drugs is. What's my line on drugs?

— Boris Johnson drugs

Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.

— Boris Johnson you

Old Man Howard, that Old Man Howard, he just keeps rolling, just keeps rolling.

— Boris Johnson war

I’m very attracted to it. I may be diverting from Tory party policy here, but I don’t care.

— Boris Johnson art

Life isn’t like coursework, baby. It’s one damn essay crisis after another.

— Boris Johnson work

I'm backing 's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest.

— Boris Johnson self

I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar.

— Boris Johnson think

I'm a rugby player, really, and I knew I was going to get to him, and when he was about two yards away I just put my head down. There was no malice. I was going for the ball with my head, which I understand is a legitimate move in soccer.

— Boris Johnson ya

Look, I wouldn't trust Harriet Harman's political judgement.

— Boris Johnson men

In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London. I want to see a figure like that again. If you can't turn the clock back to 1904, what's the point of being a Conservative?

— Boris Johnson journey

Had it been us staging the Games, I don't think we would necessarily have done the switcheroo with the girl with the braces

— Boris Johnson aging

The meat in the sausage has got to be Conservative

— Boris Johnson age

The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink off the scale.

— Boris Johnson men

I could not fail to disagree with you less.

— Boris Johnson you

They are like glistening wet otters frolicking.

— Boris Johnson listening

My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.

— Boris Johnson

Johnson: Whatever type of Walls sausage is contrived by this great experiment, the dominant ingredient has got to be conservatism. The meat in the sausage has got to be Conservative, I would say. With plenty of bread and other bits and pieces.Paxman: The question is whether its a chipolata or a Cumberland sausage, I suppose, is it?

— Boris Johnson men

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