Jeremy Clarkson Quotations

If you're thinking of coming to America, this is what it's like: you've got your Comfort Inn, you've got your Best Western, and you've got your Red Lobster where you eat. Everybody's very fat, everybody's very stupid and everybody's very rude - it's not a holiday programme, it's the truth.

Ambition is a very dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don't, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition.

I have a pathological terror of falling through ice. I nearly drowned once. I fell off a boat and got a cramp, and was rescued by an oil-rig diver, a great bear of a man who simply leant into the water and scooped me out with one finger.

I've been told by the BBC that if I make one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time, I will be sacked. And even the angel Gabriel would struggle to survive with that hanging over his head. It's inevitable that one day, someone, somewhere will say that I've offended them, and that will be that.

I don't think I am particularly funny. In fact, I know I'm not.

I'm not capable of having an affair. You can ask my wife. I'm not physically capable.

Argentina and Burma. I have been to most of the countries in the world, but not those two. I want to shoot doves in Argentina. Burma, of course, because no one has really been there.

I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the Guardian hating me.

I have had an amazingly fortunate life. I'm a child from Yorkshire, which is sort of like Cleveland without the pretty bits.

You take out an injunction against somebody or some organisation and immediately news of that injunction and the people involved and the story behind the injunction is in a legal-free world on Twitter and the Internet. It's pointless.

Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space.

I think people who watch 'Top Gear' think they're the only ones watching it, which I quite like, because it can hopefully last for a long time.

The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian.

I dish the dirt out, and I can take it. But why should my mother and children have to take it? In 20 years, I have taken any number of stories, most of which are not true, without a murmur of complaint. But some stories you have to draw the line and say No.

I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the 'Guardian' hating me. I like it when I read they want me to die painfully. Then I think I've really got under their skin. It's like annoying a teacher. Once they've shown signs of weakness, you really can go for them.

I read in the papers how much I'm earning and fall about laughing because I'm sure it's not that much; otherwise, I'd have an enormous boat. I'm literally not the slightest bit interested in money. I just don't pay any attention to money; it's rather vulgar.

If you're writing, it means getting up and writing all day, and if you're filming, it's getting up and filming all day. I get up, go to my computer, write, turn it off, and go to bed. That is a Clarkson day.

We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging.

When I was 16, I wanted to look like Lord Byron. It's not really a haircut so much as a hair-not-cut, but I've never changed it. It's a bit Byron, a bit Don Juan DeMarco and other things that I aspire to be.

I dish the dirt out and I can take it. But why should my mother and children have to take it?

Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you.

This is the Renault Espace, probably the best of the people carriers. Not that that's much to shout about. That's like saying “Ooh good I've got syphilis, the BEST of the sexually transmitted diseases.”

Multi-tasking is the ability to screw everything up simultaneously.

You're a car, but most of all, what you are, what you've become, is a mate. And that's what makes a car special. That's what makes a car great. You start to think of it as a person. You start to love it.

It’s what non-car people don’t get. They see all cars as just a ton and a half, two tons of wires, glass, metal, and rubber, and that’s all they see. People like you or I know we have an unshakable belief that cars are living entities… You can develop a relationship with a car and that’s what non-car people don’t get… When something has foibles and won’t handle properly, that gives it a particularly human quality because it makes mistakes, and that’s how you can build a relationship with a car that other people won’t get.

Cows eat grass and silage. This is melting the ice caps and killing us all. So they need a new foodstuff: something that is rich in iron, calcium and natural goodness. Plainly they cannot eat meat so here is an idea to chew on. Why not feed them vegetarians?

A turbo: exhaust gasses go into the turbocharger and spin it, witchcraft happens and you go faster.

You have city centre pubs where men go to meet girls, not realising that all girls in city centre pubs have thighs like tug boats and morals that would surprise a zoo animal.

Whenever I’m suffering from insomnia, I just look at a picture of a Toyota Camry and I’m straight off.

I'm not only in touch with my feminine side, I'm in touch with my gay side as well.

I'm sorry, but having an Aston Martin DB9 on the drive and not driving it is a bit like having Keira Knightley in your bed and sleeping on the couch.

I started to realise that being impolite saves an awful lot of time and costs you nothing.

This car is more fun than the entire French air force crashing into a firework factory.

Speed focuses the mind. It cuts through the fog of drab everyday living and keeps us on our toes. Speed works. Speed saves lives. Speed is good. And we should have more of it, not less.

Being smarter than you look is better than looking smarter than you are.

If you are clinically insane, by which I mean you wake up in the morning, and you think you are an onion, this is your car, (about the BMW X3).

She can take a year to read something, whereas I like a book that becomes more important in my life that life itself. When I was in the middle of 'Red Storm Rising' by Tom Clancy - which was not selected for the Man Booker shortlist - you could have taken my liver out and fed it to the dog. And I wouldn't have noticed.

Now we get quite a lot of complaints that we don't feature enough affordable cars on the show so we'll kick off tonight with the cheapest Ferrari of them all!

The Suzuki Wagon R should be avoided like unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite

Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I'm coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun.

Biathletes need to eat 6.000 calories a day: six thousand! That's the equivalent of 2 pounds of butter, 70 slices of bread, 112 eggs, 86 tabs of yogurts, 28 potatoes, 117 biscuits and 21 TWIX bars. On that basis, I could be an Olympic biathlete!

Asking the front wheels of a car to do their normal job of steering while handling more than 170hp is like asking a man to wire a plug while juggling... penguins... while making love... to a beautiful woman while on fire, on stage... in front of the Queen. It's all going to go wrong.

I don't often agree with the RSPCA as I believe it is an animal's duty to be on my plate at supper time.

Think of it as Angelina Jolie. You’ve heard she’s mad and eats nothing but wallpaper paste. But you would, wouldn’t you?

This is a hard job. Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day.

Driving most supercars is like trying to manhandle a cow up a back staircase, but this is like smearing honey onto Keira Knightley.

The newest Ferrari of them all, the 458, the Italia. The GT3 was good, but nowhen near as good as this... almost nothing on Earth is as good as this... Set that something I've just told, involving Cameron Diaz... and some honey... then it comes that even that isn't as good as this.

They are by far the worst drivers. They are spiteful, dithering, old and in the way. They should have their licences taken away.

Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you're going.

This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots.

Telling people at a dinner party you drive a Nissan Almera is like telling them you've got the Ebola virus and you're about to sneeze.

Unlike furious thin-lipped feminists, I tend not to draw distinctions between men and women, apart from in bed where you really do need to spot the difference.

If a football official were to call for a slow-motion replay every time Didier Drogba fell over, each match would last about six weeks.

If the Scottish want to break away, I shall stand on Hadrian's Wall with a teary handkerchief, and say: 'Good riddance to the lot of you, and take your stupid bagpipes with you.'

I'm a horse of a man!

If you go through the pearly gates backwards in a fireball, that's a cool way to die!

Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert, all that before they nicked all the oil in the world

I rang up Jay Kay, who's got one, and said: 'Can we borrow yours?' and he said, 'Yeah, if I can borrow your daughter, because it amounts to the same thing.'

I think Koenigsegg is Swedish for: Oh no, my head has just exploded!

There are shantytowns in South Africa that are built better than Renaults!

When you've finished using a car, put the f***ing seat back, so humans can use it afterwards.

We live in the worst country in the world. At least we do for lazy, inefficient, office-bound police, whose response to an extraordinary rise in violent crime is to order more speed cameras.

...it seemed appropriate that I should develop some kind of illness. This is a good idea when you are at a loose end because everything, up to and including herpes, is better than being bored.

Let's be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It's a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark.

I think it's a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit.

Like many men, I can never find anything that I'm looking for, even when I'm actually looking at it. In a fridge, I think milk is actually invisible to the male eye. And so, it turns out, are dirty great holes in the fence.

Nothing can prepare you for the yawning chasm of time that passes in Canada before the healthcare system actually does any healthcare.

Italy's youngsters complain, apparently, about having to live at home until they are 72 but that's because they spend all their money on suits and coffee and Alfa Romeos rather than mortgages.

Sometimes I stagger even myself with my genius.

I'm having a nice cold pint and waiting for this to blow over.

It was as relaxing as being tickled.

You know what, I distinctly remember my boat blew up and I was killed!

Does anyone really imagine for a moment that my wife gives two stuffs about global warming? She certainly did not appear to be all that bothered on Thursday evening when, during the great carbon-saving switch-off, I ran round the house furiously turning on every light, hair dryer, dishwasher and toaster.

Hollywood movies are designed for 15-year-old youths from North Dakota who, intellectually speaking, are on equal terms with a British zoo animal.

Mix an anorexic body with a heart made of pure fire and you are going to go with a savagery that's hard to explain.

Koenigsegg are saying that the CCX is more comfortable. More comfortable than what BEING STABBED?

Then there’s the biggest problem of them all – the problem of being in an Audi TT when you are not called Angela. I do not know why it can be driven by only people named Angela, but that’s a fact and there’s nothing we can do about it. If you have a TT and you aren’t called Angela, you have the wrong car.

I don't understand bus lanes. Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than I do?

I was reading The Mirror the other day and came across a letter from a reader who wrote, 'I was riding my bike to work when this red Ferrari pulled up next to me. Out of the window, Jeremy Clarkson shouted 'Get a car', and drove off.' What I actually said was, 'Get a car you hatchet faced, leaf-eating tw*t

It couldn't pull a greased stick out of a pig's bottom

Tonight, the new Viper, which is the American equivalent of a sportscar in the same way, I guess, that George Bush is the equivalent of a President.

I therefore have to use The Force. And weirdly, this doesn't work very well. I don't understand why, because on the last census, I put my religion down as Jedi Knight...

Why is the forecast so bland? Why instead of 'stormy' don't they just say the sea's 'a frothing maelstrom of terror and hopelessness'?

Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It's like making a hard core adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You'd just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke's sweaty face.

I wore a groove in the kitchen floor with endless trips to the fridge, hoping against hope that I had somehow missed a plateful of cold sausages on the previous 4,000 excursions. Then, for no obvious reason, I decided to buy a footstool.

Boredom forces you to ring people you haven’t seen for eighteen years and halfway through the conversation you remember why you left it so long. Boredom means you start to read not only mail-order catalogues but also the advertising inserts that fall on the floor. Boredom gives you half a mind to get a gun and go berserk in the local shopping centre, and you know where this is going. Eventually, boredom means you will take up golf.

Like every big organisation these days, the BBC is obsessed with the wellbeing of those who set foot on its premises. Studios must display warning notices if there is real glass on the set, and the other day I was presented with a booklet explaining how to use a door. I am not kidding.

.. international hand of freindship. A cigarette

Ecologically speaking, a spilt tanker load is like sticking a safety pin into an elephant's foot. The planet barely notices. After the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska the oil company spent billions tidying up the coastline, but it was a waste of money because the waves were cleaning up faster than Exxon could. Environmentalists can never accept the planet's ability to self-heal.

Because drug dealers shoot each other in London, Norfolk farmers can't have guns to defend their homes. I mean, no one wants a gun - except at 4am when they hear a strange sound in the kitchen.

The "public" seems to have bought into this belief that life can, and should, be run without risk, that all accidents are avoidable, and that death is something that only happens to people who eat meat and smoke.

I’d like to consider Ferrari as a scaled down version of God.

In the olden days I always got the impression that TVR built a car, put it on sale, and then found out how it handled. Usually when one of their customers wrote to the factory complaining about how dead he was.

My epiglottis is full of bees!

Some say he never blinks, and that he roams around the woods at night foraging for wolves. All we know is he’s called the Stig.

Some say that he has no understanding of clouds, and that his ear wax tastes like Turkish Delight. All we know is he’s called the Stig.

Some say his droppings have been found as far north as York, and that he has a full size tattoo of his face, on his face. All we know is he’s called the Stig.

The only person to ever look good in the back of a 4-seater convertible was Adolf Hitler

Governments would rather spend their money on another bomber than education, and why do we fear black men when every bit of suffering in our lives has a Caucasian face attached to it?

The fact is that Britain is the most warlike nation on earth. In the history of armed combat, we are the only democracy to have declared war on another democracy - England versus Finland in the second world war, in case you're interested - and we're always at the front of the queue when Johnny Foreigner gets a bit uppity. Who stood up to the Kaiser? Who stood up to Adolf? And let's not forget the Argies. What other country would have sent its fleet halfway round the world and lost 250 men to protect a flock of sheep and some oil that might or might not be there? We're still at it.