John Cleese citations

“You do realize as you grow older that almost nobody knows what they are talking about.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“He who laughs most, learns best.”

“And now for something completely different…”

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

“Oh, I could spend my life having this conversation - look - please try to understand before one of us dies”

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

“Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a
mistake.”

“How to defend yourself against a banana”

“It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ Brian Stimpson, Clockwise”

“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.”

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

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

“I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.”

“I think the problem with people like this is that they are so stupid that they have no idea how stupid they are.”

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

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

“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.”

“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."”

“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.”

“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"]”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”