Listing twenty quotes…

I’m going nowhere, Lynn. Quite literally. I’m on the ring road. Third time round. I’ve just been into B&Q for a bag of tungsten-tipped screws. Never gonna use ‘em. Never gonna use ‘em. Meet me in the car park in half an hour, Lynn.

Alan Partridge

I've just noticed I've come out with odd socks on. They're shaped like underpants.

Humphrey Lyttelton on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

As I walked through the car park I saw a car with two posters in the back window with a photo of the kidnapped journalist and the words "Release Alan Johnston!". What are the chances that his captors will be walking through a carpark in Oxford?

Richard Herring

One of the best reviews I ever got described me as “extraordinarily grotesque”.

David Schneider

I terrified myself the other day by trying to write down a list of all the things that we don’t actually need. Things that if they didn’t exist, no one would miss them. Basically I’m talking about the Daily Express. Or the hovercraft - just get rid of it. The novels of Wilbur Smith, badminton, cummerbunds, the song ‘Flash Bang Wallop, What a Picture’, the music of the Bluetones, the countries Chad, Paraguay and Laos. Unnecessary.

Armando Iannucci

If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.

Eric Idle

On the Buncefield Oil Depot explosion:

The plume was not toxic. It was made up of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrocardigans.

John Prescott

After playing 'Higher State Of Consciousness' by Josh Wink for the second time:

I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that sounded better when I played it the other night, at the wrong speed.

John Peel

If Elvis were alive today, I think he'd really understand happy hardcore.

John Peel

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.

Popular Mechanics, March 1949

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

Farmers' Almanac

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

Stephen Hawking

Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Anonymous (quoted with approval by James Randi)

Interpreting the glass house metaphor:

People who live in glass houses have to answer the door.

Karl Pilkington

People say 'ooh, doesn't Lionel Blair look good for his age?' Well, no, not really. Not unless he's about five hundred. Otherwise he looks like nothing more than an elaborately coiffured scrotum.

Linda Smith

Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.

Boris Johnson

Arriving at Hillsborough Castle for the Northern Ireland talks:

A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really - we can leave those at home - but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders, I really do.

Tony Blair

The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.

Tim Berners-Lee

On inventing the World Wide Web:

I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web.

Tim Berners-Lee

I'm English, and as such I crave disappointment.

Bill Bailey

What is This?

A jumble of brilliant quotes by various clever people.