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John Cleese Quotes

John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, voice actor, screenwriter, producer, and comedian. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.

In the mid-1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers, with Cleese receiving the 1980 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures, both of which he also wrote. He also starred in Clockwise and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as R and Q, two Harry Potter films, and the last three Shrek films.

With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay, he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films. In 1976, Cleese co-founded The Secret Policeman's Ball benefit shows to raise funds for the human rights organisation Amnesty International.

✵ 27. October 1939  •  Other names J. Cleese
John Cleese photo
John Cleese: 32 quotes11 likes

Famous John Cleese Quotes

“Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers, and they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers — which is why almost no technology ever works.”

John Cleese

BBC interview http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/11/20/john_cleese_die_another_day_interview.shtml on Die Another Day (20 November 2002)]

“Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.”

John Cleese

Source: Life and How to Survive It

“Mother told me once that some Westonians privately criticised Dad for retreating so soon. They apparently felt it would have been more dignified to have waited a week or so before running away. I think this view misses the essential point of running away, which is to do it the moment the idea has occurred to you. Only an obsessional procrastinator would cry, “Let’s run for our lives, but not till Wednesday afternoon.”

John Cleese

Source: So, Anyway...

“Solemnity, I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it? The two most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor. It somehow freed us all and made the services inspiring and cathartic. But solemnity, it serves pomposity. The self important always know at some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor. That's why they see it as a threat! And so, dishonestly, they pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial.”

John Cleese

“I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.”

John Cleese

From The Human Face, BBC Television (2001)

John Cleese Quotes about people

“Too many people confuse being serious with being solemn.”

John Cleese

“When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.”

John Cleese

From Channel 4 documentary The Secret Life of Brian (2007)

“Because these people are operating at a very very low level of mental health, they are incapable of understanding the teaching.”

John Cleese

From Channel 4 documentary The Secret Life of Brian (2007)

“A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people.”

John Cleese

From an interview http://www.avclub.com/article/john-cleese-14197 with The A. V. Club (2008)

“You can do the creation and then criticize it, but you can't do them at the same time. So if you're worried about offending people and constantly thinking of that, you are not going to be very creative. So I think it has a disastrous effect.”

John Cleese

“John Cleese says wokeness has a 'disastrous' impact on comedy” https://www.foxnews.com/media/john-cleese-wokeness-disastrous-impact-comedy Fox News (July 20, 2022)

John Cleese Quotes

“Six hundred years ago we would have been burned for this. Now, what I'm suggesting is that we've advanced.”

John Cleese

Defending the film Life of Brian on BBC chat show Friday Night Saturday Morning (9 November 1979)

“He who laughs most, learns best.”

John Cleese

As quoted in Creating Emotionally Safe Schools: A Guide for Educators and Parents‎ (2001) by Jane Bluestein, p. 215

“And now for something completely different…”

John Cleese

“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.”

John Cleese

As quoted in Best New Games (2002) by Dale N. LeFevre, p. 9

“How to defend yourself against a banana”

John Cleese

“Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”

John Cleese

“I can do anything I want, I'm eccentric!”

John Cleese

“If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?”

John Cleese

As quoted in W.T.F.? : (What Is Wrong With Tom Faerie?)‎ (2006) by H. M. Leathem

“Aping Urbanity, Oozing with Vanity
Plump as a Manatee, Faking Humanity
Journalistic Calamity, Intellectual Inanity
Fox News Insanity, You're a profanity
Hannity”

John Cleese

"Ode To Sean Hannity", sent by Cleese to Keith Olbermann, and read publicly on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (8 August 2009) http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=1211bdfc-2a9a-4e72-911f-e2d954bfe909

“If I like chocolate it won't surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my fridge, but if you find out I've got 16 warehouses full of chocolate, you'd think I was insane. All these rich guys are insane, obsessive compulsive twits obsessed with money — money is all they think about — they're all nuts.”

John Cleese

On Fresh Air with Terry Gross, promoting Fierce Creatures, which Cleese says is a satire about Rupert Murdoch's greed. (1997)

“When I was teaching, the headmaster told me "You know, the sad thing about true stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it."”

John Cleese

A "tweet" by John Cleese on his @JohnCleese [verified] Twitter account, 4 Apr 2017

“You see, you could never do a sketch like that these days. The audience is too uninformed. I blame the Americans. Nation of obese, violent, pig-ignorant, bible-thumping morons contaminating world culture. That’s why I spend most of my time here in France. … Beautiful, isn’t it? Just look at those olive trees.”

John Cleese

Interviewer: This is Santa Barbara.
From PBS series Monty Python's Personal Best: John Cleese's Personal Best (2006), playing role of senile old man.

“My biggest regret? Not being knighted by the Queen. I should have been a knight, and I would have been knighted, if I hadn't written one horrible horrible Python sketch which I deeply deeply regret — [cue Python sketch: "Upper Class Twit of the Year"]”

John Cleese

From PBS series Monty Python's Personal Best: John Cleese's Personal Best (2006), playing role of senile old man.

“Basil Fawlty was an easy character for me. For some reason, portraying a mean, uptight, incompetent bully comes naturally to me.”

John Cleese

On Fresh Air with Terry Gross (1997)

“If I had not gone into Monty Python, I probably would have stuck to my original plan to graduate and become a chartered accountant, perhaps a barrister lawyer, and gotten a nice house in the suburbs, with a nice wife and kids, and gotten a country club membership, and then I would have killed myself.”

John Cleese

On Fresh Air with Terry Gross (1997)

“My biggest regret? Not being knighted by the Queen. I should have been a knight, and I would have been knighted, if I hadn't written one horrible horrible Python sketch which I deeply deeply regret”

John Cleese

cue Python sketch: "Upper Class Twit of the Year"
From PBS series Monty Python's Personal Best: John Cleese's Personal Best (2006), playing role of senile old man.

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