controversial quotes

Discover thought-provoking and divisive quotes in our controversial category. Explore perspectives that challenge conventional beliefs.

I want you to know that I have nothing against Orlando, though you are, of course, far more likely to get shot or robbed there than in London.

- Boris Johnson

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

- Boris Johnson

I want London to be the most cycle-friendly city on Earth, and I want more people to be happy and safe on bicycles.

- Boris Johnson

I think people have a legitimate right to minimise their tax obligations if they can, but they should pay their fair whack. I do think it's important to be transparent.

- Boris Johnson

I think I'm basically a liberal Conservative – I believe in low tax, spirit of free enterprise, and in making sure that we as politicians create the framework for business to produce the dosh that we're going to need to pay for the poorest. And the longer I live, the more I think that we all have a duty to each other.

- Boris Johnson

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.

- Boris Johnson

I suppose with houses and assets, then I guess I would be a millionaire. But so are a lot of people.

- Boris Johnson

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.

- Boris Johnson

I lead a life of blameless domesticity and always have done.

- Boris Johnson

I just find it absolutely bizarre that we are being lectured by the Americans about giving up our sovereignty and giving up control when the Americans won't even sign up to the international convention on the law of the seas, let alone the International Criminal Court.

- Boris Johnson

I have not been more robust towards female rather than male assembly members and I do not believe I have been remotely sexist.

- Boris Johnson

I have more in common with a three-toed sloth or a one-eyed pterodactyl or a Kalamata olive than I have with Winston Churchill.

- Boris Johnson

I don't believe that economic equality is possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity.

- Boris Johnson

I do think human beings cannot be faulted for wishing to judge themselves and their lives and their achievements by others around them; that is a natural human feeling.

- Boris Johnson

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.

- Boris Johnson

I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest.

- Boris Johnson

I always believe writing is an indispensable part of one's political armoury.

- Boris Johnson

Huge numbers of people in London depend on their cars. Fuel duty is becoming a big factor in people's cost of living. I believe in trying to ease these burdens.

- Boris Johnson

As a Scot Gordon Brown will find it hard to convince people in England he should be prime minister.

- Boris Johnson

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

- Boris Johnson

My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.

- Boris Johnson

There's nothing like the feeling of knowing that you've made a difference in someone's life, even if that difference is a lifetime of nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills.

- Marilyn Manson

The key to changing the way people think is to change what’s popular. That’s why rather than submit to the mainstream, you have to become it—and then overcome it.

- Marilyn Manson

The balance between good and evil, and the choices we make between them, are probably the single most important aspects of shaping our personalities and humanity.

- Marilyn Manson

Relationships never break cleanly. Like a valuable vase, they are smashed and then glued back together, smashed and glued, smashed and glued until the pieces just don't fit together anymore.

- Marilyn Manson

Most of the world's problems could be avoided if people just said what they fucking meant.

- Marilyn Manson

Women will never be taken seriously until they accept full responsibility for their sexuality.

- Camille Paglia

I can't remember what my line on drugs is. What's my line on drugs?

- Boris Johnson

I think it'd be disgraceful if a chap wasn't allowed to have a bit of fun in Las Vegas. The real scandal would be if you went all the way to Las Vegas and you didn't misbehave in some trivial way.

- Boris Johnson

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it. Try to fake three laughs in an hour -- ha ha ha ha ha -- they'll take you away, man. You can't.

- Lenny Bruce