Jeremy Clarkson Quotes

Planet Earth thought it had £10. But it turns out we only had £2. Which means everyone must lose 80% of their wealth

It couldn't pull a greased
stick out of a pig's bottom

I therefore have to use The Force. And weirdly, this doesn't work very well. I don't understand why, because on the last census, I put my religion down as Jedi Knight ...

Because drug dealers shoot each other in London, Norfolk farmers can't have guns to defend their homes. I mean, no one wants a gun - except at 4am when they hear a strange sound in the kitchen.

This is the Renault Espace, probably the best of the people carriers. Not that that's much to shout about. That's like saying "Ooh good I've got syphilis, the BEST of the sexually transmitted diseases."

Think of it as Angelina Jolie. You've heard she's mad and eats nothing but wallpaper paste. But you would, wouldn't
you?

No really. If you only have seven years left, that means the Reaper will be dropping round for tea and buns in about 61,000 hours from now. You therefore shouldn't be wasting time by pootling to the garden centre at walking pace. So come on, grandad. The clock's ticking. Pedal to the metal. Or you'll be in your flowerbed before the plants you bought.

Lego, however, is always opened and then left lying around so adults have something to tread on when they are prowling around around the house at two in the morning, in bare feet, looking for the source of a noise.

Some say his droppings have been found as far north as York, and that he has a full size tattoo of his face, on his face. All we know is he's called the Stig.

The newest Ferrari of them all, the 458, the Italia. The GT3 was good, but nowhen near as good as this ... almost nothing on Earth is as good as this ... Set that something I've just told, involving Cameron Diaz ... and some honey ... then it comes that even that isn't as good as this.

Koenigsegg are saying that the CCX is more comfortable. More comfortable than what BEING STABBED?

You know what, I distinctly remember my boat blew up and I was killed!

These people go on to tell us that mobile phones will cook our children's ears, that long-haul flights will fill our legs with thrombosis and that meat is murder. They want an end to all deaths – and it doesn't stop there. They don't even see why anyone should have to suffer from a spot of light bruising.
Every week, as we filmed my television chat show, food would be spilt on the floor, and every week the recording would have to be stopped so it could be swept away. 'What would happen,' said the man from health and safety, 'if a cameraman were to slip over?' 'Well,' I would reply, 'he'd probably have to stand up again.

Some say he never blinks, and that he roams around the woods at night foraging for wolves. All we know is he's called the Stig.

I'm a horse of a man!

To address this, we must wage a war on the militants. First, we must make it an offence, punishable by many years in jail, to ride a bicycle in anything other than what I like to call home clothes. Cycling shops selling gel for your bottom crack and outfits with padded gussets will be raided by the police and the owners prosecuted. This way, cyclists will be stripped of their uniforms and made to look like human beings.

This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots.

The fact is that Britain is the most warlike nation on earth. In the history of armed combat, we are the only democracy to have declared war on another democracy - England versus Finland in the second world war, in case you're interested - and we're always at the front of the queue when Johnny Foreigner gets a bit uppity. Who stood up to the Kaiser? Who stood up to Adolf? And let's not forget the Argies. What other country would have sent its fleet halfway round the world and lost 250 men to protect a flock of sheep and some oil that might or might not be there? We're still at it.

I think people who watch 'Top Gear' think they're the only ones watching it, which I quite like, because it can hopefully last for a long time.

In England on a hot day, women are happy to walk around with their bra straps showing. In Paris, they don't shave their armpits. And you just can't mention Germany and style in the same book, let alone the same sentence. It's the same story in America too, where the Farrah Fawcett haido of 1975 still reigns supreme. In Italy, even the policemenists look like they've just come off a catwalk. One I found, standing on a rostrum in the middle of a Roman square, was immaculate, as was his routine. Each wave of the hand, each toot of the whistle and each twist of the body was Pans People perfect. Never mind that the traffic was completely ignoring him, he looked good, and that's what mattered. Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you're going.

Sometimes I stagger even myself with my genius.

I think it's a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit.

Cows eat grass and silage. This is melting the ice caps and killing us all. So they need a new foodstuff: something that is rich in iron, calcium and natural goodness. Plainly they cannot eat meat so here is an idea to chew on. Why not feed them vegetarians?

If you're writing, it means getting up and writing all day, and if you're filming, it's getting up and filming all day. I get up, go to my computer, write, turn it off, and go to bed. That is a Clarkson day.

... it seemed appropriate that I should develop some kind of illness. This is a good idea when you are at a loose end because everything, up to and including herpes, is better than being bored.

I have had an amazingly fortunate life. I'm a child from Yorkshire, which is sort of like Cleveland without the pretty bits.

We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. I want to drive around in a Terminator, not the heroine in an E. M. Forster novel.

This is a hard job. Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day.

A turbo: exhaust gasses go into the turbocharger and spin it, witchcraft happens and you go faster.

The Suzuki Wagon R should be avoided like unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite

International hand of freindship. A cigarette

Let's be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It's a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark.

I'm having a nice cold pint and waiting for this to blow over.

Some say that he has no understanding of clouds, and that his ear wax tastes like Turkish Delight. All we know is he's called the Stig.

Multi-tasking is the ability to screw everything up simultaneously.

Back in August 1960 an American pilot called Joe Kittinger climbed into the open gondola beneath a balloon called Excelsior III and floated up to 102,800 feet. At this point, 20 miles above the Earth in what is technically space, he jumped. Moments later he became the first man to go through the sound barrier without the benefit of a plane. It was, and still is, the highest parachute jump ever, and it proved you can 'abandon ship' even when you're in space.

I'm not capable of having an affair. You can ask my wife. I'm not physically capable.

If a football official were to call for a slow-motion replay every time Didier Drogba fell over, each match would last about six weeks.

Sips fuel like a mouse sipping sherry from a hypodermic needle.

Why is the forecast so bland? Why instead of 'stormy' don't they just say the sea's 'a frothing maelstrom of terror and hopelessness'?

Biathletes need to eat 6.000 calories a day: six thousand! That's the equivalent of 2 pounds of butter, 70 slices of bread, 112 eggs, 86 tabs of yogurts, 28 potatoes, 117 biscuits and 21 TWIX bars. On that basis, I could be an Olympic biathlete!

I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the Guardian hating me.

I don't understand bus lanes. Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than I do?

This car is more fun than the entire French air force crashing into a firework factory.

I look at everyone in their Honda CR-Vs and their BMW X3s and their Audi Q3s and I think, Are you all mad? An ordinary estate or hatchback costs less to buy and less to run and is nicer to drive, more comfortable and just as practical. But it doesn't take up so much bloody space.

Unlike furious thin-lipped feminists, I tend not to draw distinctions between men and women, apart from in bed where you really do need to spot the difference.

I think it's because, in our complicated lives, we yearn only for the simple. An evening in front of the telly. A nice sit-down. A game of cards. At a drinks party, I can find myself talking to a fascinating and beautiful woman who's just written a book about something interesting and clever. But what I yearn for is to be in the pub with my mates.

The new MX-5 is like the new Ford Mondeo and the Subaru
Legacy Outback. It is one of those cars that's absolutely brilliant ... and nobody buys it. You never see one on the road.

The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian.

In the olden days it was easy to make a television work.You plugged an aerial cable into the back, then bashed the top with your fist until, eventually, Hughie Green stopped jumping up and down.

and although the W came along in the tenth century, modern Germans still seem to manage perfectly well by using a V instead. Except when the German managing director of Aston Martin tries to say 'vanquish'.

If you were to buy a [BMW] 6-series, I recommend you select reverse when leaving friends' houses so they don't see its backside.

Italy's youngsters complain, apparently, about having to live at home until they are 72 but that's because they spend all their money on suits and coffee and Alfa Romeos rather than mortgages.

Everything I have ever bought is in my car. People say it's a skip and disgusting, and refuse to get in there. That's one advantage. Another is that last week, I needed a headache pill and it was simply a case of rummaging under the seat until I found one. Because it's so full of junk, I always have everything I could conceivably need. A Biro, a refreshing drink, lots of loose change, all sorts of maps, an iron lung, and so on. I kid you not. There's even a wetsuit in there.

The Americans lecture the world on democracy and then won't let me turn the traction control off!

Whenever I'm suffering from insomnia, I just look at a picture of a Toyota Camry and I'm straight off.

Driving most supercars is like trying to manhandle a cow up a back staircase, but this is like smearing honey onto Keira Knightley.

The only person to ever look good in the back of a 4-seater convertible was Adolf Hitler

Now we get quite a lot of complaints that we don't feature enough affordable cars on the show so we'll kick off tonight with the cheapest Ferrari of them all!

I dish the dirt out, and I can take it. But why should my mother and children have to take it? In 20 years, I have taken any number of stories, most of which are not true, without a murmur of complaint. But some stories you have to draw the line and say No.

If we build three million new houses by 2020, where will we grow all the stuff needed to feed the people who live in them?

In Italy, you sometimes get the impression they'd be happier to lose the Ppe than lose their right to drive like maniacs.

If the Scottish want to break away, I shall stand on Hadrian's Wall with a teary handkerchief, and say: 'Good riddance to the lot of you, and take your stupid bagpipes with you.'

I have a pathological terror of falling through ice. I nearly drowned once. I fell off a boat and got a cramp, and was rescued by an oil-rig diver, a great bear of a man who simply leant into the water and scooped me out with one finger.

There are shantytowns in South Africa that are built better than Renaults!

She can take a year to read something, whereas I like a book that becomes more important in my life that life itself.
When I was in the middle of 'Red Storm Rising' by Tom Clancy - which was not selected for the Man Booker shortlist - you could have taken my liver out and fed it to the dog. And I wouldn't have noticed.

I wore a groove in the kitchen floor with endless trips to the fridge, hoping against hope that I had somehow missed a plateful of cold sausages on the previous 4,000 excursions. Then, for no obvious reason, I decided to buy a footstool.

[A Bugatti Veyron is] quite the most stunning piece of automotive engineering ever created ... At a stroke then, the Veyron has rendered everything I've ever said about any other car obsolete. It's rewritten the rule book, moved the goalposts and in the process, given Mother Nature a bloody nose.

Ambition is a very dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don't, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition.

God may have created the world in six days, but while he was resting on the seventh, Beelzebub popped up and did this place.

Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I'm coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun.

I've been told by the BBC that if I make one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time, I will be sacked. And even the angel Gabriel would struggle to survive with that hanging over his head. It's inevitable that one day, someone, somewhere will say that I've offended them, and that will be that.

I read in the papers how much I'm earning and fall about laughing because I'm sure it's not that much; otherwise, I'd have an enormous boat. I'm literally not the slightest bit interested in money. I just don't pay any attention to money; it's rather vulgar.

We are going to have to stop penalising people for making that most human of gestures- mistake

No, no, no. There's no such thing as cheap and cheerful. It's cheap and nasty & expensive and cheerful.

All this health and safety talk is just killing me.

It's what non-car people don't get. They see all cars as just a ton and a half, two tons of wires, glass, metal, and rubber, and that's all they see. People like you or I know we have an unshakable belief that cars are living entities ... You can develop a relationship with a car and that's what non-car people don't get ... When something has foibles and won't handle properly, that gives it a particularly human quality because it makes mistakes, and that's how you can build a relationship with a car that other people won't get.

When I was 16, I wanted to look like Lord Byron. It's not really a haircut so much as a hair-not-cut, but I've never changed it. It's a bit Byron, a bit Don Juan DeMarco and other things that I aspire to be.

I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it's flying; the next it's tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face.

If you are clinically insane, by which I mean you wake up in the morning, and you think you are an onion, this is your car, (about the BMW X3).

Speed focuses the mind. It cuts through the fog of drab everyday living and keeps us on our toes. Speed works. Speed saves lives. Speed is good. And we should have more of it, not less.

I think Koenigsegg is Swedish for: Oh no, my head has just exploded!

It was as relaxing as being tickled.

I've noticed that 'news' is not what's happened. It's what's happened on camera. If a herd of tigers runs amok in a remote Indian village, it's not news. If a gang of wide-eyed rebels slaughters the inhabitants of a faraway African village, it's not news. But if it's a bit windy in America, it is news. Because in America everything that happens is recorded. I find myself wondering if last week's Israeli raid on a Turkish ship in a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza would have had the coverage it did if the battle hadn't been captured on film. And likewise the racing driver who broke a leg after crashing in the Indy 500. It only became a big deal because we could watch the accident from several angles in slow motion.

The air conditioning in Lamborghinis used to be an asthmatic sitting in the dashboard blowing at you through a straw.

As I've said before, I never understand why people ski down a slope to a bar and then go on a lift so they can ski down the same slope again. That's like walking to the pub on a Sunday, then going home and walking to the pub again. Madness.

We live in the worst country in the world. At least we do for lazy, inefficient, office-bound police, whose response to an extraordinary rise in violent crime is to order more speed cameras.

Like every big organisation these days, the BBC is obsessed with the wellbeing of those who set foot on its premises. Studios must display warning notices if there is real glass on the set, and the other day I was presented with a booklet explaining how to use a door. I am not kidding.

Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert, all that before they nicked all the oil in the world

I rang up Jay Kay, who's got one, and said: 'Can we borrow yours?' and he said, 'Yeah, if I can borrow your daughter, because it amounts to the same thing.'