Boris Johnson Quotes

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

We celebrate the contribution of people who have come to this country to make it better. ~ Boris Johnson

I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris [Johnson] cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead. ~ Michael Gove

Meanwhile London Mayor Boris Johnson 'joked' that women only go to university because 'they've got to find men to marry' (hilarious, no?) and ~ Laura Bates

I firmly believe that volunteering is good for our society and brings communities together. It's a fantastic opportunity to get involved in your local community, to meet new people and to gain a sense of pride and achievement. ~ Boris Johnson

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

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

London is - after Athens and Rome - the third most influential city in history. ~ Boris Johnson

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

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

I'm a one-nation Tory. ~ Boris Johnson

I lead a life of blameless domesticity and always have done. ~ 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

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

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

There is an African fly that lays its eggs in the jelly of children's eyes, the hatching larvae blinding them by feeding on the eye itself. But the fly has no quarrel with the child. It is merely following its nature.
Likewise, Boris Johnson, a vile grub laying his horrible eggs in the soft jelly of the EU debate, has no agenda beyond his own advancement. He believes in nothing, and neither does his spiritual soulmate, the eye-scoffing African fly. ~ Stewart Lee

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

I have not been more robust towards female rather than male assembly members and I do not believe I have been remotely sexist. ~ Boris Johnson

I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest. ~ 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

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

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

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

on a stool amid his guffawing comrades, 'I stand for ~ Boris Johnson

It's not for everyone. Some people just haven't got it. Maybe he [Boris Johnson] is one of them. ~ Ruth Davidson

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

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

The Shakespearean theatre was the product of the entrepreneurial maritime culture of the age, ~ Boris Johnson

Themselves on the building's famous balcony. Millions more will watch the ceremony and celebrations on live television
crowded around screens in their homes, at street parties in towns and villages and at major landmarks. Lawmakers are already lobbying London Mayor Boris Johnson to install a giant screen in the city's iconic Trafalgar Square. Britain's Foreign Office said royal officials had sent their regrets to Estibalis Chavez, ~ Anonymous

It turned out that in the governance of a nation's security, many absurd situations had to be worked around: a toxic clown in the Foreign Office [Boris Johnson], a state visit by a narcissistic bed-wetter [Trump], the tendency of the electorate to jump off' the occasional cliff [Brexit]. ~ Mick Herron

Everyone says it's going to be Snapcase at the palace. He listens to the people."
"Yeah, right," said Vimes. And I listen to the thunder. But I don't do anything about it. ~ Terry Pratchett

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

I would have thought that they [Boris Johnson and Nigel Farag] would have had a plan,instead of developing a plan they are leaving the boat. ~ Jean-Claude Juncker

It would be a sad day if we British stopped being cynical, but you sometimes wonder whether we overdo it. ~ Boris Johnson

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

There are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters. ~ 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

Some people think that it [Brexit] is the end of the world. It's not. On the contrary, it's a massive opportunity for this country. ~ Boris Johnson

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

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

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

This is our chance to build a Britain where everyone benefits from the success of the economy. ~ Boris Johnson

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

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

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

In particular, I wanted to help build a team behind Boris Johnson so that a politician who argued for leaving the European Union could lead us to a better future. ~ Michael Gove

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

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 suppose with houses and assets, then I guess I would be a millionaire. But so are a lot of people. ~ 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 Remain campaign ... I've never seen a more miserable offering. All they are saying is stay in and we'll do our best to make sure that Britain's Parliamentary independence isn't eroded faster than we can possibly imagine. ~ 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

I want London to be a competitive, dynamic place to come to work. ~ Boris Johnson

In response to be asked about Boris Johnson becoming UK Prime Minister...

"I'm delighted. As the UK continues to plunge ever faster into a future akin to a dystopian novel I'll never run out of material to write more books. Although now that reality is more bizarre than fiction maybe plot-lines will need to be more ambitious. Perhaps a book where Boris Johnson is really an accidental sentient snafu of Trump's scrotum lint. Kind of a sequel to the Bush-Blair story. I see musical rights being drawn up as we speak. ~ R.D. Ronald

The Geiger-counter of Olympomania is going to go zoink off the scale, ~ 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

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

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

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

The crucial thing is to look in an informed way at what's going on. Look at the way in which we are forced by our imbalanced system to push away people who might contribute mightily to the NHS. ~ 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

Boris [Johnson] follows the Bullingdon playbook: you break it and someone else has to fix it. ~ Tim Farron

I'm in politics to change things - if possible, for the better. I was a journalist for a long time, but I had a kind of midlife crisis, and I decided I needed to do something to get on the pitch and stop endlessly kicking over other peoples' sandcastles. ~ 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 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

Boris [Johnson] was cavalier with assurances he made. We're picking a prime minister here to lead the country, not a school prefect. ~ Dominic Raab

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. ~ Boris Johnson

The idea that affable Boris[Johnson] is actually divisive, selfish and unreliable is Mr 's biggest weakness. ~ James Kirkup

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

He's lovely," I say, putting my hand out to the dog. "What's his name?"
"Boris Johnson."
I blink. "Pardon?"
He smiles. "Because he's blond and stupid and makes very questionable decisions. ~ Lily Morton

I'm a very good friend of Stephen Crabb, I had great fun campaigning with Boris Johnson on the winning side, I have great experience working with Theresa May in government on national security. I respect all of them and I hope that's very much the tone. ~ Liam Fox

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

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

I think there's almost an expectation that it should be Theresa [May] and Boris [Johnson]. I think they'd be real surprise if it ended up with someone else. ~ Nigel Evans

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

Our friends in America will be at the front of the queue for trade deals. ~ Boris Johnson

You are part of our Great British family. ~ 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

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

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'd like thousands of schools as good as the one I went to, Eton. ~ Boris Johnson

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

I want to win and I want to be in office. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

I think it'd be disgraceful if a chap wasn't allowed to have a bit of fun in Las Vegas. The real scandal would be if you went all the way to Las Vegas and you didn't misbehave in some trivial way. ~ Boris Johnson

I hear that there are plans afoot to produce a remake of Hans Christian Andersen's classic - 'The Emperor's New Clothes'. Who better to star in the leading role than recently defrocked Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson ? A narcissist with such naked ambition; an opportunist with such threadbare morals; a disgraced politician with such thinly veiled contempt for the British electorate, and judging by the sycophantic praise they heap on each other, arguably cut from the very same cloth as Donald Trump. Despite laughable pretensions of having the stature and fortitude of a modern day Churchill, he cuts a now lonely figure, a mere insignificant shadow. Boris, you can't hide anymore. Your warts and all are exposed for the whole world to see. ~ Alex Morritt

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 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