John Cleese Quotes

I was always a sports nut but I've lost interest now in whether one bunch of mercenaries in north London is going to beat another bunch of mercenaries from west London.

My views are heretical to people who believe in political correctness.

The great thing about Florida is you - each city's about two hours' drive from everywhere else.

I think it takes a long time, as you get older, to realize just how crazy the world is, just how ridiculous it all is.

I wish you wusses would stop whining about your unhappiness. I'm really fed up with it. Pour yourself a scotch and pull yourself together. Go out and shoot something!

All humour is critical, you know? You make stupid jokes. I mean, stupidity is an infirmity, isn't it?

Naturally, people's image is of a performer, but the reality of it is the writing for me has always been the most important thing and the most rewarding thing.

The Americans all love 'The Holy Grail', and the English all love 'Life Of Brian', and I'm afraid on this one, I side with the English.

I find the Alexander Technique very helpful in my work. Things happen without you trying. They get to be light and relaxed. You must get an Alexander teacher to show it to you.

But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.

By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.

English television from the Fifties to the Nineties was the least bad in the world, and now it's just as bad as it is anywhere.

He who laughs most, learns best.

We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode.

When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.

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

British press think entirely in clichés, and when they do come across creative work, they think that it must be based on something, because they don't realize that you can create things that aren't based on things.

I don't want to hurt people.

When people say 'I'm not a prude, but ...' what they mean is 'I am a prude, and ...'.

Filming takes a lot out of you. It really does. It's immensely demanding, and you have to put the rest of your life in the icebox until you do your final shot.

It's too difficult to start right from scratch and try and be funny out of the blue.

I love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?'

If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'

I get bored easily. I've been bored most of my life.

I don't understand why very, very rich people want to have even more money than they've already got.

When I was a child and I was upset about something, my mother was not capable of containing that emotion, of letting me be upset but reassuring me, of just being with me in a calming way. She always got in a flap, so I not only had my own baby panics, fears and terrors to deal with, but I had to cope with hers, too. Eventually I taught myself to remain calm when I was panicked, in order not to upset her. In a way, she had managed to put me in charge of her. At 18 months old, I was doing the parenting.

I was a terrible dancer. I dance like an Englishman.

I think you can write very good comedy without a partner, but what I love about it, working with a partner, is that you get to places you'd never get on your own. It's like when God was designing the world and decided we couldn't have children without a partner; it was a way of mixing up the genes so you'd get a more interesting product.

Tension is wonderful for making people laugh.

Most of the bad taste I've been accused of has been generic bad taste; it's been making fun of an idea as opposed to a person.

I've always called myself a writer/performer, not an actor because I basically write what I perform.

My compulsion to always be working has become less strong and my current business is purely down to this enormous alimony. If I wasn't doing this I'd be making documentaries about wildlife and other subjects that interest me.

God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.

Other people, you know, put a latex rubber on, you know, to become sexually excited. There's so much I don't understand.

I think humor is incredibly positive, I think it is life advancing. There's medical research to show that it improves your antibodies. It's all about sense and perspective.

We all die at the end, but does that nullify everything? Would most people rather say, "I wish I hadn't been born?" Once you're born you'll have to die, now is that funny or sad?

Although I had good hand-eye coordination, I was so tall and skinny and muscularly weak that I just was not well coordinated. But what I started to do quite early on was watch some of the great old silent comedians, like Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin, and then later on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.

Now most people do not want an ordinary life in which they do a job well, earn the respect of their collaborators and competitors, bring up a family and have friends. That's not enough any more, and I think that is absolutely tragic - and I'm not exaggerating - that people feel like a decent, ordinary, fun life is no longer enough.

To be creative you must create a space for yourself where you can be undisturbed... separate from everyday concerns.

My hovercraft is full of eels.

The writing is the most important bit, and performing it is just closing the circle because I'm less likely to screw it up than anyone else.

years ago we would have been burned for this. Now what I am suggesting is that we've advanced.

What is absurd is not the teachings of the founders of religion, it's what followers subsequently make of it.

It's a plastic surgeon you need, not a doctor

I was very sad to hear of the death of Ronnie Barker, who was such a warm, friendly and encouraging presence to have when I started in television. He was also a great comic actor to learn from.

I learned a lot of things about literature talking to people at the publishing company. Did you know that about 90 percent of celebrity autobiographies are ghostwritten?

Nerves are always a big problem for me, which is why I loved doing American sitcoms. Because you know when you do the take in front of the audience that you're going to do it again afterwards. A minute after you finish, you just go and do it again. So, there's that sort of safety net. And then if you made a little mistake or two, they'll go pick it up, so there's nothing to worry about.

The Americans are so much more positive. They are much more in love with success. In Britain, they're a fairly envious bunch, and they love it if you fail.