Quotes by "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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The truth is that the history of the last couple of thousand years has been broadly repeated attempts by various people or institutions - in a Freudian way - to rediscover the lost childhood of Europe, this golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans, by trying to unify it.

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.

We cannot turn our backs on Europe. We are part of Europe.

I used to get very, very frustrated by people being told what to do by nanny in Brussels. And I remember once I rang the official who was actually responsible for banning the prawn-cocktail-flavoured crisp, which I think contained a dye called Arithrazine or something like that.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Huge numbers of people in London depend on their cars. Fuel duty is becoming a big factor in people's cost of living. I believe in trying to ease these burdens.

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

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

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.