Boris Johnson

Politician

1964-06-19

Quotes by 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• I've got more in common with a three-toed sloth than I have with Winston Churchill. There is no easy comparison with any modern politician. The more you read about him, the more completely amazed you are about what he did - his energy, his literary fecundity, his ability to work - just unbelievable energy.

  Read quote

• I have more in common with a three-toed sloth or a one-eyed pterodactyl or a Kalamata olive than I have with Winston Churchill.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• I just find it absolutely bizarre that we are being lectured by the Americans about giving up our sovereignty and giving up control when the Americans won't even sign up to the international convention on the law of the seas, let alone the International Criminal Court.

  Read quote

• So I'm definitely in favour of stimulating the dynamic wealth creation sectors of the economy.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• One thing you have got to do politically is to identify the ties that bind society together and try to strengthen them.

  Read quote

• I'm a one-nation Tory.

  Read quote

• Sometimes I can think of so many ways of expressing myself that I feel I'm an old typewriter, and too many keys come forward at once - and I get jammed.

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

• The job of mayor of London is unbelievably taxing, particularly in the run-up to the Olympics.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• We were told by President Obama that in respect of international trade, we would have to get to the back of the queue - not a position that America normally requires the United Kingdom to be in when it comes to other matters, such as the Iraq War.

  Read quote