John Cleese
actor, television actor, film actor, comedian, voice actor, screenwriter, writer, film producer, autobiographer, stage actor, film director
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All Quotes by John Cleese
“I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family, it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner, everyone knows everyone, and you're there and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing.”
“He who laughs most, learns best.”
“He who laughs most, learns best.”
“You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change.”
“I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.”
“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.”
“Six hundred years ago we would have been burned for this. Now, what I'm suggesting is that we've advanced.”
“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.”
“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.”
“He who laughs most, learns best.”
“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.”
“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.”
“If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?”
“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. [Interviewer: This is Santa Barbara.]”
“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"]”
“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.”
“Because these people are operating at a very very low level of mental health, they are incapable of understanding the teaching.”
“A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people.”
“Aping Urbanity, Oozing with Vanity Hannity”
“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 don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change.”
“If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?”
“I think that money spoils most things, once it becomes the primary motivating force.”