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
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. – Boris Johnson
My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters. – 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
My point was very simple, and it was that it is absolutely absurd for the United States of America to continue to urge us further down the line towards a federal superstate when the U.S. has not even signed up to the U.N. Convention on Human Rights. – 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
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
That is the best case for Bush; that, among other things, he liberated Iraq. It is good enough for me. – Boris Johnson
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. – Boris Johnson
The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition. – Boris Johnson
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
London is the most commercially important city in Europe, and it’s the most populous city. It should be for the whole of the European continent what New York is to America. That’s what it should be. – Boris Johnson
I think the risks that people see of terrorism are incredibly important but we are very confident we have got the right people on it and the risks have been minimised. – Boris Johnson
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
I’m not particularly politically correct, so I tend to reflect what I think are the terrible realities of life, which I think are, generally speaking, conservative. – 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
So I’m definitely in favour of stimulating the dynamic wealth creation sectors of the economy. – 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
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. – 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
It would be a sad day if we British stopped being cynical, but you sometimes wonder whether we overdo it. – 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
I think people have a legitimate right to minimise their tax obligations if they can, but they should pay their fair whack. I do think it’s important to be transparent. – Boris Johnson
