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Boris Johnson

210 quotes

“The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more... Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. … the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right... If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited... The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discussing his views on Africans and "Instant Carbohydrate Gratification" The Spectator (2 February 2002)
“Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase... Indeed, high Chinese culture and art are almost all imitative of western forms: Chinese concert pianists are technically brilliant, but brilliant at Schubert and Rachmaninov. Chinese ballerinas dance to the scores of Diaghilev. The number of Chinese Nobel prizes won on home turf is zero, although there are of course legions of bright Chinese trying to escape to Stanford and Caltech... It is hard to think of a single Chinese sport at the Olympics, compared with umpteen invented by Britain, including ping-pong, I'll have you know, which originated at upper-class dinner tables and was first called whiff-whaff. The Chinese have a script so fiendishly complicated that they cannot produce a proper keyboard for it.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Have I Got Views for You (2006), p. 277
“When a regime has been in power too long, when it has fatally exhausted the patience of the people, and when oblivion finally beckons – I am afraid that across the world you can rely on the leaders of that regime to act solely in the interests of self-preservation, and not in the interests of the electorate. ... First-past-the-post has served this country well, and served dozens of other countries well. We would be mad to go to a great deal of trouble and expense to adopt a system that is less fair than the one we have. ... By all means let us have a referendum – the one we were promised, on the Lisbon EU Treaty.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: AV was a last gasp from Gordon Brown's bunker – and it's a gigantic fraud" The Telegraph (28 February 2011)
“The choice is really quite simple. In favour of staying, it is in Britain’s geo-strategic interests to be pretty intimately engaged in the doings of a continent that has a grim 20th-century history, and whose agonies have caused millions of Britons to lose their lives. History shows that they need us. Leaving would be widely read as a very negative signal for Europe. It would dismay some of our closest friends, not least the eastern Europeans for whom the EU has been a force for good: stability, openness, and prosperity. It is also true that the single market is of considerable value to many UK companies and consumers, and that leaving would cause at least some business uncertainty, while embroiling the Government for several years in a fiddly process of negotiating new arrangements, so diverting energy from the real problems of this country – low skills, low social mobility, low investment etc – that have nothing to do with Europe.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Voters have to ask Donald Tusk some hard questions before they accept his EU 'deal'" The Telegraph (7 February 2016)
“Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009. Something vanished from that room, and no one could quite explain why. It was a bust of Winston Churchill – the great British war time leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years. But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington. No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision. Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender. Some said that perhaps Churchill was seen as less important than he once was. Perhaps his ideas were old-fashioned and out of date. Well, if that's why Churchill was banished from the Oval Office, they could not have been more wrong.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a column for The Sun newspaper (22 April 2016).
“I think Rex Tillerson is absolutely clear in his view, which is the same as mine. You have got to engage with Russia, but you have got to engage in a very guarded way. You have got to beware of what they are up to. There is no question that, when you look at Russian activity on the cyber front, when you look at what they are doing in the western Balkans, when you look at what has been happening in the Ukraine, you've got to be very, very cautious. I think it is entirely right to have a dual track approach. We don't want to get into a new Cold War. That's something London and Washington are completely at one on. But nor do we want Russian behaviour to continue as it is - and Rex Tillerson has been very clear about that.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Boris Johnson says US agrees on need for caution over Russia, BBC News, 16 February 2017
“We are telling cafes, bars, pubs and restaurants to close tonight as soon as they reasonably can and not to open tomorrow. To be clear they can continue to provide take out services. Night clubs, theatres, gyms and leisure centres should close on the same time scale. These are places where people come together and indeed the whole purpose is to bring people together. Some people will be tempted to go out tonight. Please don't. You may think you are invincible bit there is no guarantee you will get mild symptoms. As far as possible we want you to stay at home - that's how we can protect our NHS and save lives.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Requested the closure of pubs, restaurants, gyms, entertainment venues, museums and galleries that evening due to the coronavirus pandemic, at his daily 5pm press conference on 20 March 2020 as quoted in The Daily Teleg…
“[On the assumption Carrie Symonds, now Johnson, had briefed against Dominic Cummings] She hasn't briefed anyone and my instructions to all were to shut the f*** up. How is any of us supposed to know where these briefings come from? Look at the claims made on behalf of allies of Lee [Cain] and Dom, that I'm out in six months, that I can't take decisions, that Carrie is secretly forging lockdown policy, and about a billion equally demented claims. Are you responsible for all that crap? No. Then look at it from my point of view. This is a totally disgusting orgy of narcissism by a government that should be solving a national crisis.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last message (November 2020) to Dominic Cummings before his departure from Downing Street, as cited in "Dominic Cummings attacks Boris Johnson over pandemic response — as it happened", The Times (31 October 2023).
“It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister. … I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the breaks. … I want to thank you, the British public, for the immense privilege that you have given me. And I want you to know that from now on until the new prime minister is in place, your interests will be served and the government of the country will be carried on.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in "Boris Johnson’s resignation speech: full transcript" by Phoebe Southworth, in The Telegraph (7 July 2022)
“I have received a letter from the Privileges Committee making it clear - much to my amazement - that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament. They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons. They know perfectly well that when I spoke in the Commons, I was saying what I believed sincerely to be true and what I had been briefed to say, like any other minister. They know that I corrected the record as soon as possible; and they know that I and every other senior official and minister - including the current Prime Minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak - believed that we were working lawfully together. I have been an MP since 2001. I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts, the Committee know it. But they have wilfully chosen to ignore the truth, because from the outset, their purpose has not been to discover the truth, or genuinely to understand what was in my mind when I spoke in the Commons. Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court. Most members of the Committee - especially the chair - had already expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had even seen the evidence. They should have recused themselves.”
Boris Johnson (born 1964) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Resignation statement in full as Boris Johnson steps down", BBC News (9 June 2023)