Quotes from Boris Johnson

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn't ever get anywhere.

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

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

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.

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.

Can I say anything good about Ken Livingstone? A long time ago he did some good things, but I can't now remember what any of them were.

This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt. But it is a moment for hope...

This is a super masticated subject, and it is time to spit it out.

This is an absolute turning point in the story of our country because I think if we go on with being enmeshed in the E.U., it will continue to erode our democracy. That is something that worries me.

What I worry about is that people are losing confidence, losing energy, losing enthusiasm, and there's a real opportunity to get them into work.

I'm a one-nation Tory.

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 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.