John Cleese Ideas Quotations

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

If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas

The trouble with the British is that they are not interested in ideas. If Jesus came back today and offered to speak for an hour on British television, they would say, "What! Another talking head?

...when you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that's why I don't think there's any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead.

If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth.

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.

The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.

We don't know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.