Jeremy Clarkson: Trending quotes (page 2)

“First off, the whole point of airborne troops is surprise: you don't know they're coming until they're there. But because Cain arrived 24 hours after the first wave, the surprise was gone. And to make matters worse, the landing zone was some eight miles from the bridge. So, thanks to some incompetent planning by the top brass in England, the Germans knew that Cain and his men were coming, they knew where he landed, they knew where he was going, and they had the wherewithal to do something about it.”

Jeremy Clarkson

The Victoria Cross: For Valour (2003)

Men

“I simply don't understand why the Nobel academy gave him a peace prize or why Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh gave him a new garden. And I don't see why he should be given a statue in Trafalgar Square, either. If we're after someone who stands up for the oppressed, what about Jesus? I feel fairly sure he never blew up a train.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Mandela Just Doesn't Deserve His Pedestal, p. 239
The World According to Clarkson (2005)

Peace , Feeling , Understanding , Training

“The Flying Scotsman was the first train, ever, to do 100 MPH. 147 tons doing the ton.”

Jeremy Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Flying , Training

“Hurricane Katrina didn't just knock a few bricks from the fabric of a levee. More importantly, it knocked a few bricks also from the notion that America is a shining beacon of hope for a troubled world.
It isn't. It's a house of straw. With no education to glue that straw together.”

Jeremy Clarkson

"Flood that released America's demons", The Sun, September 10, 2005

Education , Hope , Housing

“Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Top Gear, 2 November 2008; as quoted in "Clarkson joke sparks complaints" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7707641.stm, BBC News, 4 November 2008
Top Gear

Effort , Change

“It's no more daunting in there than in a Georgian drawing room. You sit on a supremely comfortable chair- it'd be even better if it were a wingback, I'm surprised it's not- overlooking acres of leather and wood. You're never tempted, as you are in a Maybach, to push a button just to find out what it does. And then having to spend the rest of the journey trying to find which button undoes whatever the first button did. This makes for a hugely relaxing drive. So relaxing, in fact, that you sometimes forget that you're in a car. I did.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Rolls-Royce, p. 25
I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Cars , Drawing , Forgetting

“It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Sunday Times May 17, 2009, reviewing the Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article6294116.ece

Money , Cars , Tree

“You get the picture. And so did BMW. When they bought the company they could have fitted a new body to one of their 7 Series. That's what Mercedes did to create the Maybach. But instead of wandering around the BMW spare-parts division saying, "What do we want?" the engineers fired up their computers and asked, "What do we need?". Plainly they looked at what Henry Royce and Charles Rolls were trying to achieve a hundred years ago, and thought, "Zis is vot ve must do also."”

Jeremy Clarkson

And as a result the Rolls-Royce Phantom is quite simply the best car in the world.
Rolls-Royce, p. 24
I Know You Got Soul (2004)

World , Cars , Parting

“Funnily enough, Daihatsu are one of the better interior stylists. God knows how they do it.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Source: Clarkson on Cars (1996), p. 62

God

“The greatest car ever should get out there and do the job, but it should do more besides, which is why I have to say it's the Ferrari 355. This car is as much a piece of sculpture as a lump of engineering. You could derive as much pleasure from putting it in your living room, where the piano used to be, and looking at it as you could from going for a drive.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 23

Pleasure , Cars

“The first thing that will strike you as odd in Japan is how polite everyone is. Quite apart from the neverending bowing, they have obsequiousness down to an art that even the Chinese haven't mastered.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Source: Clarkson on Cars (1996), p. 58

Art

“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.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Sunday Times November 8, 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article6907747.ece

Idea , Thinking

“Tourists do not come here for our weather, or for the quality of our provincial cooking. Nor are they attracted by the exceptional value of our hotels, our beaches, or Birmingham. I've never met an American or a Japanese person who has said: "I want to come to Britain so I can buy an Arabic newspaper from a Bengali store where the Cashier speaks Polish."”

Jeremy Clarkson

Source: For Crying Out Loud! The World According to Clarkson Volume Three (2008), p. 17

Personality , Weather , Cooking

“Then there's power. There was a time when people cooed over Ferraris that developed 200 horsepower, whereas today 2.0 litre Escorts can manage that. It's almost impossible to buy a car that won't do a hundred. (If you really want one, various Mercedes diesels make a pretty good stab at it.) Then there's the environment. The Volkswagen Beetle could kill a rain forest at 400 paces whereas today's Golf trundles around with tulips coming out of its exhaust. The gas coming out of a Sab is actually cleaner than the air that went in. That's true, that is.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 21

People , Cars , Time

“I have had long soaks in the bath that were more stressful. I have been on tropical beaches that were more noisy. After a while I became so detached from reality that I put on my indicator and tried to overtake the car in front. Sounds fine except for one thing. I was already in the outside lane. I came within an inch of hitting the central crash barrier and to this day I wonder what the chap in the car behind was thinking when he saw a three-ton, £250,000 Rolls-Royce indicate, to show the driver wasn't asleep, and then drive off the road.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Rolls-Royce, p. 25
I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Cars , Thinking , Reality

“Then there’s the styling. Or rather, there isn’t. Any attempt to give these cars a tapering roofline or a curved rear end is wasteful of precious capacity, which means all of them look exactly – and I mean exactly – like chest freezers. And because they have such tiny wheels they actually look like chest freezers on casters. And that in turn means they look absurd.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Sunday Times June 8, 2008, reviewing the Nissan GT-R http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article4076537.ece

Cars

“Francis Bacon once said there is no beauty that hath not some strangeness to its proportion. Cameron Diaz proves that- she's got a mouth like a slice of watermelon. But the Flying Scotsman proves it to be wrong. There is no strangeness at all. He is exquisite to behold, partly because he is so nicely balanced and partly because he seems to shout "I AM VERY POWERFUL.'”

Jeremy Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Beauty , Flying

“The Graf Zeppelin was the mother of all airships, 787 feet long and 115 feet high. Imagine Canary Wharf, on its side, floating over your head.”

Jeremy Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Imagination

“In the last couple of weeks everyone has been asking how on earth the greatest and most powerful nation on earth could be so crippled by a bit of wind and rain.
The rest of the world has natural disasters without the whole of society faling to pieces. So why is it different in America?
Well, if you stop and think about it, the answer is obvious.
America may have given the world the space shuttle and, er, condensed milk, but behind the veneer of civilisation most Americans barely have the brains to walk on their back legs.”

Jeremy Clarkson

"Flood that released America's demons", The Sun, September 10, 2005

World , Nature , Thinking

“Over the years the Flying Scotsman has travelled the world and been owned by pretty well everyone except my wife, and possibly Kate Moss. As I write he's for sale again, for a not inconsiderable 2.5 million Pounds. That may seem a lot for something that no longer has a purpose, even if he is Britain's engineering heritage. But he is not simply a machine. Like an Aston Martin DB7 or an F-16 fighter, he works as an art form too, a piece of sculpture. So what if you can't go anywhere in him anymore. Put him in your garden and spend your days just looking at him.”

Jeremy Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

World , Art , Travel , Flying