Top 125 Quotes & Sayings by Jeremy Clarkson

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. I want to drive around in a Terminator, not the heroine in an E. M. Forster novel.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 either black gay or a lesbian. Chalk and cheese, they reckon, works.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

If you were to buy a [BMW] 6-series, I recommend you select reverse when leaving friends’ houses so they don’t see its backside.

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

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

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

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

Americans are good at herding Bison. The end.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I love Alfa Romeos and that [Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio] was tremendous.

All this health and safety talk is just killing me.

Sometimes I stagger even myself with my genius.

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.

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.