Quotes
 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.- 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.
- It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in Watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.
- The proposed ban on incitement to 'religious hatred' make no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself.
- Ok, I said to myself as I sighted the bird down the end of the gun. This time, my fine feathered friend, there is no escape.
- Not even Mr Blair has been able to erode the unions conviction that we all have a 'right' to a minimum wage: Both the minimum wage and the Social Charter would palpably destroy jobs.
- Labour's appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it.
- Not only did I want Bush to win, but we threw the entire weight of The Spectator behind him.
- That is the best case for Bush; that, among other things, he liberated Iraq. It is good enough for me.
- Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power.
- Try as I might, I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth profit matrix, and stay conscious.
- But here's old Ken - he's been crass, he's been insensitive and thuggish and brutal in his language - but I don't think actually if you read what he said, although it was extraordinary and rude, I don't think he was actually anti-Semitic.
- 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.
- I'm having Sunday lunch with my family. I'm vigorously campaigning, inculcating my children in the benefits of a Tory government.
- Howard is a dynamic performer on many levels. There you are. He sent me to Liverpool. Marvellous place. Howard was the most effective Home Secretary since Peel. Hang on, was Peel Home Secretary?
- What we hate, what we fear, is being ignored.
- 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.
- I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap dancing, and other related and vital subjects.
- We are confident in our story and will be fighting this all the way. I am very sorry that Alastair Campbell has taken this decision but I can see that he got his tits in the wringer.
- Nor do I propose to defend the right to talk on a mobile while driving a car, though I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on.
- I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil.
- I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis.
- The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP, they have run out of better ideas.
- The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition.
- Any seat would be mad not to take him. He's a terrific chap.
- It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall.
- As snow-jobs go, this beats the Himalayas.
- Some readers will no doubt say that a devil is inside me; and though my faith is a bit like Magic FM in the Chilterns, in that the signal comes and goes, I can only hope that isn't so.
- If Amsterdam or Leningrad vie for the title of Venice of the North, then Venice - what compliment is high enough? Venice, with all her civilisation and ancient beauty, Venice with her addiction to curious aquatic means of transport, yes, my friends, Venice is the Henley of the South.
- He's lost the plot, people tell me. He's drifting rudderless in the wide Sargasso Sea of New Labour's ideological vacuum.
- Look the point is ... er, what is the point? It is a tough job but somebody has got to do it.
- It was a stellar performance. I may as well give up now and make way for an older man.
- 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.
- 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 didn't see it, but it sounds barbaric. It's become like cock-fighting: poor dumb brutes being set upon each other by conniving television producers.
- I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel.
- I advise you all very strongly - go for a run, get some exercise, and have a beautiful day.
- Tremendous, little short of superb. On cracking form.
- Nothing excites compassion, in friend and foe alike, as much as the sight of you ker-splonked on the Tarmac with your propeller buried six feet under.
- My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
- I can't remember what my line on drugs is. What's my line on drugs?
- Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.
- Old Man Howard, that Old Man Howard, he just keeps rolling, just keeps rolling.
- I'm very attracted to it. I may be diverting from Tory party policy here, but I don't care.
- Life isn't like coursework, baby. It's one damn essay crisis after another.
- I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest.
- 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.
- I'm a rugby player, really, and I knew I was going to get to him, and when he was about two yards away I just put my head down. There was no malice. I was going for the ball with my head, which I understand is a legitimate move in soccer.
- Look, I wouldn't trust Harriet Harman's political judgement.
- I thought it was a 50-50 ball.
- She's a method columnist, isn't she. She believes it while she's writing it. It's fantastic!
- I'm making absolutely no comment...and no, I did not.
- Ken [Livingstone] doesn't think he's got anything to say sorry for and if that's really his feeling, then I think that he should stick to his guns.
- I think they get a fair squeeze of the sauce bottle.
- Will I throw my hat into the ring? It depends on what kind of ring it is and what kind of hat I have in my hand.
- I'm kicking off my diet with cheeseburger - whatever Jamie Oliver says McDonalds are incredibly nutritious and, as far as I can tell, crammed full of vital nutrients and rigid with goodness.
- Ian [Hislop] keeps telling me to sack him. It puts me in an impossible position.
- I'd want to get Blair and really interrogate the guy. I'd really want to pin him up against a palm tree and slap him around and get the truth out of him about a few things we need a bit of elucidation.
- I could not fail to disagree with you less.
- I'm batting for an ideology which has been burgled by someone else.
- There may be a reason I can't think of but the problem with that reason is that I can't think of it now.
- Do I have to do this?
- I've never seen this on this show before!
- We're moving irresistably towards a conclusion.
- Men women love love women.
- I think it would be wrong for me to take the you know to block the path of the a needy badger.
- Why are they called quad-bikes?
- Is he [George Best] sleeping with Miss Jamaica.
- Well, basically because of, for the money.
- I paint myself.
- What transaction happened here? Have I just bought your house?
- I've walked straight into a massive elephant trap.
- How do you know we can't deliver coconuts?
- 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.
- Coconuts from the party that keeps its promises!
- I'm in charge here!
- Well he cheated death, and death is the one thing you're allowed to cheat.
- I think the term is recklessly honest
- The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy.
- Boris was told to engage his brain before speaking in future.
- You are a self-centred, pompous twit. Even your body language on TV is pathetic. Get out of public life. Go and do something in the private sector.
- He may seem like a lovable buffoon but you know he wouldn't hesitate to line you all up against a wall and have you shot.
- Boris Johnson [is] known as the thinking man's idiot.
- He's the sort of person who 200 years ago would have died aged 30 leading a cavalry charge into a volcano.
- Boris Johnson, people always ask me the same question, they say, 'Is Boris a very very clever man pretending to be an idiot?' And I always say, 'No.'
- This guy is just fumbling around.
boris johnson
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