Jeremy Clarkson citáty

strana 2

„Auta jsou jedny z nejvíce opojných, nejkrásnějších věcí, které kdy lidstvo vytvořilo.“

„Škoda je de facto hromada německých součástek smontovaných Petrem Čechem - Dokonalá kombinace.“

„V dnešní době stačí, abyste se jen zmínili, že máte rádi auta – čímž chcete říct, že kdybyste vyhráli v loterii, koupili byste si Ferrari – a osoba, se kterou se bavíte, od vás s křikem uteče. - Léta s Top Gear“

„Pokud s něčím, co jsem napsal, nesouhlasíte, netrapte se tím. Nejspíš už s tím nesouhlasím ani já sám.“

„"Když dnes přijedete na nějakou filmovou premiéru, okamžitě se k vám vrhne pomatená holka s mikrofónem a ptá se: "Jakou značku nosíte?" Jenže já žádnou značku nenosím, ty náno. Mám na sobě to co jsem ráno našel pohozené u postele."“

„Právě jsem dosáhl maximální rychlosti… Uvnitř budovy!“

„Když dnes vjíždíte do nějaké vesnice, většinou vás vítá blikající cedule s údajem o vaší rychlosti. Toť jistě náramně užitečné… ale ještě užitečnější by byla cedule, která by vám ukazovala, nakolik vypadáte jako kretén.
Dokonce jsem i vymyslel název takového záření - Pakometr.“

„Možná​ si říkáte, že když už jsem celých dvaapadesát let úplný budižkničemu - možná až na úspěchy ve slovní kopané - měl jsem dost času naučit se prohrávat. Stydím se to přiznat, ale já to stále neumím.“

„Jak říkají Rusové, chování způsobuje, že Britové přijdou pozdě.“

„Cítím se na devatenáct. Myslím, že mám tělo jako devatenáctiletý. Přijde mi, že na devatenáct i vypadám. Vlastně to, že mi už devatenáct není, mi dochází jen tehdy, když se snažím chovat, jako kdyby mi devatenáct pořád bylo.“

„Ne ne ne. Neexistuje nic tak levného a veselého. Je to levné a ošklivé a drahé a veselé.“

„(Recenze Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid) Je hrozné. Biblicky hrozné. Možná to nejhorší auto, které si můžete koupit. Je to první auto, o kterém jsem kdy uvažoval, že s ním narazím do stromu, abych ho už nemusel řídit.“

„Jak všichni víme, prohrávat je mnohem lepší než vyhrávat. Zaprvé to
vyžaduje mnohem méně fyzické námahy. Když chcete vyhrát utkání
tenisu nebo ve squashi, musíte se opravdu snažit a stojí vás to hodne
behání a potu.“

„Existuje však jedna automobilka, která nikdy neztratila ze zřetele svou roli na trhu. Rolls-Royce. Sir Henry Royce, který společnost v roce 1904 založil, byl skutečně mužem na slovo vzatým. "Snažte se o dokonalost ve všem, co děláte. Nic nepřijímejte jako téměř správné nebo dostatečně dobré. Kvalita zůstane dlouho poté, co se zapomene na cenu."“

“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.”

“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."”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.'”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I was never allowed to play with guns when I was a child. While various friends were able to scamper around the woods with their Johnny Sevens, I had to make do with an old twig. And convincing an eight-year-old he was dead simply because I'd pointed a piece of larch his way was not quite as easy as you might imagine.”

“The Alfa Romeo GTV6 had the worst gearbox I've ever encountered, and the worst driving position and the worst record for reliability. Nevertheless, I bought one. I knew it was a hopeless basket case but I'd become smitten by the noise its engine made: a rumble in the jungle at low revs and almost an eerie howl as it neared the red line. I would put up with the massive bouts of truculence, the deep discomfort and the absurdly heavy steering because no car before, or since, has ever made such a glorious sound. It was music to the enthusiast's ears, like a cross between 'Ode to Joy' and 'Nessun Dorma.”

“The Falcon was forever going wrong. Time and again Han and his rebel cohorts would have to bang on the dashboard with their fists to get some wayward system working. And this too helped give the ship a flawed, almost human quality. This is something I look for in all machines…”

“He genuinely looked terrified. The poor man, he's actually seen the books. In England we have this one-eyed Scottish idiot.”

“I've argued time and again that the old trade unionists and CND lesbians didn't go away. They just morphed into environmentalists. The red's become green but the goals remain the same. And there's no better way of achieving those goals than turning the lights out and therefore winding the clock back to the Stone Age. Only when we're all eating leaves under a hammer and sickle will they be happy.”

“I'd had two days of training and figured it would be like playing on a PlayStation. And so it is. But can you imagine what it would be like trying to operate a PlayStation while inside a tumble dryer? Because that's what it's like trying to operate a remote-control camera in an F-15. More realistically, have your children tried to play on their Game Boys while being driven in the back of a car? And that's at 60mph in a vaguely straight line.”

“Technically, the Hurricane might have been able to win the Battle of Britain on its own. But for keeping up the spirits of the people on the ground while running rings round anything the Third Reich could throw at it? That was the job of the Spitfire, a symbol of British brilliance, a symbol of hope.”

“When I see that there have been 3.6 million examples of road rage in the last year, I say to myself that there must have been 3.6 million examples of bad, inattentive or selfish driving.”

“Speed in itself is not exciting. As you sit in a Boeing, are you thrilled that it's ripping up the sky with a 500mph orgy of big numbers? No, and it's the same deal in a straight line in a straight road in a car. Two hundred mph. So what. What matters is acceleration and handling, an ability to take corners as though they're not there, and this is why the Ferrari F50 has been so well received by those who know. It's light, and simple, like a choux pastry in a world full of suet pudding.”

“In order for a car to have personality, an X factor, the company that makes it must be able to take guidance and inspiration from one man, the man who started the company in the first place. This did not happen with the car outside my window, which was undoubtedly built in a jungle clearing by a company that makes cars to make money. No one began Proton or Hyundai or Daewoo because they harboured a dream of making something extraordinary or special. They are just enormous engineering and construction conglomerates that have been told by their respective governments to make cars so that the locals can get off their oxen and get modern.”

“William Shakespeare has probably done more to damage the cultural worth of Britain than anyone else in the whole of human history. After endlessly having to study his plays on the school curriculum, generations of children have ventured into adulthood convinced that all literature is coma-inducingly dreary. I don't blame them. Portia's speech about the 'gentle rain' is in no way as stimulating as 10 minutes of Grand Theft Auto. I believe that Shakespeare, along with Milton, Donne and Chaucer, has a place in modern Britain. And that place is deep in the bowels of the British Library, where he can be studied by hardcore language students.”

“The job of dedicated missile boats is to pootle about, like mice in carpet slippers, waiting for an order to destroy an entire continent.”

“You know, we've a rather warped sense of what constitutes bravery these days. I mean, even David Beckham is called a hero for scoring a penalty. But when you look at VC winners and hear their stories… well, enough said.”

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

“[on the Aston Martin DB7 sat-nav] Then there's the satellite navigation system which is the most complicated sat-nav system in the world. And the wrongest. Always wants to take you to Bedford. Even if you want to go to Manchester, it wants to go to Bedford, that's all it knows. You want to go somewhere? "Sure, I'll take you to Bedford."”

“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.”

“The fact is simple. The Spitfire looked good. It was every bit as dashing as the young men who flew it, and in flight it was as graceful as any bird. Its progress through the sky seemed effortless, as though it was simply riding the breeze and its Merlin engine was only there to provide a suitable soundtrack. You had Mr. Churchill on the radio explaining that we'd never surrender, and above you had the Spitfire, and you couldn't help thinking: Yes, we can win this thing. Possibly, just possibly, the Spitfire is the greatest machine ever made.”

“We see the same sort of thing in Japan. There was never a Mr. Toyota who, since he was a small boy, yearned for the day when he could build a small family hatchback that never broke down. And you can scour the history books until the sky turns green but you'll not find any mention of a young Timmy Datsun who stayed up until ten o'clock, even on school nights, devising his plan for a car with two milometers. Subarus are made by a romantic-sounding outfit called Fuji Heavy Industries. At night I bet the chairman sometimes forgets he has a car division. It'll just be another entry in his plofit and ross accounts. The only Japanese cars with even a trace of humanity are Hondas, and there's a very good reason for that. There was a Mr. Honda and he did have a vision when he was a small boy. Even today that vision still steers the engineers, and as a result there's a very definite correlation between the S2000 sports cars and those early motorbikes. It's solely because of this link with the past that I like Hondas more than any other Japanese cars.”

“We are an endangered species, you and me. We fans of speed, we devotees of power, we lovers of performance and beauty, and mechanical soul. We dare not speak of cams or cranks or double wishbones. We fear for our love of roaring V8s and the smell of burnt rubber. We're told to think of the economy, the environment, and not excitement and enjoyment. In an age of hybrid-this and automatic-that, we are the odd ones out. Yet there is hope. There is a haven. A place that celebrates speed, grip, gears, and fun. And it's all here for you to explore.”

“Sadiq Khan. You’ve fucked London.”