John Cleese Quotations | Page 2

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

I've always found life quite difficult to explain to people or to myself.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him enter regional distribution codes in data field 97 to facilitate regression analysis on the back end.

My mum died about three years ago at the age of 101, and just towards the end, as she began to run out of energy, she did actually stop trying to tell me what to do most of the time.

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.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

I started to make harder jokes before anyone else did. And the producers would get anxious. They'd say, 'That's a little bit hard-edged, isn't it?' And I'd say, 'Let's just try it and see how the audience reacts. If they don't like it, let's cut it out.' And the audience roared with laughter, so I learned you could do this harder humor and people loved it.

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

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

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

I don't want to have to start being unselfish again. The great thing about being on your own is you do what you damned well like.

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

Laughter destroys any divisions between people.

I think we're all born with a sense of humor. Creativity is another thing though.

Always start where the energy is.

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.

Come to me. I want to plow you like a Calgary driveway at Christmas.

Everything in comedy's got to be exactly right, which is why making a comedic film is kind of a difficult process, because, for most of the two years of shooting it and editing it and reshooting and all of that, it's not quite right. And it's only when you just at the end, you put the final polish on it, it becomes really funny again.

Students who laugh more- learn more. Students who laugh more earn more.

Once we've made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness.

A satisfied customer. We should have him stuffed.

Laughter is the best creative medicine.

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?

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

Yes it's her husband. She hasn't got over it. Died thirty years ago.

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.

Writing is the great skill, the creative skill. The acting is more an interpretative skill. And the thrill for me is the moment when I think of something. And then the challenge is how to get that funny idea to work in terms of the structure and that kind of thing, which is - and that's what I really love doing.

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

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.

Sense of humor is so much more subjective than anyone believes.

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.

And now for something completely different . . .

What's the bleedin' point?

How to defend yourself against a banana

My hovercraft is full of eels.

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

I can certainly see that you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn't know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret.

I could take an umbrella and balance it on my chin or on my foot. And I just got interested in that kind of thing. And as I played games more and more and got stronger physically, I just became more coordinated.

If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time to be considering alternative strategies.

You have to create boundaries of space and then you have to create boundaries of time.

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 people quote sketches to me, half the time I don't know what they're talking about so I have to sort of go, aha, yes, oh yep, I remember that and lie my way out of it.

The open mode is a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate, because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done properly. We can play.

Aping urbanity, Oozing with vanity, Plump as a manatee, Faking humanity, Intellectual inanity, Journalistic calamity, Fox Noise insanity, You're a profanity, Hannity

When you're being stalked by an angry mob with raspberries, the first thing to do is to release a tiger.

If you want to know who your friends are, have a major failure.

Either people walk round dressed as chickens or they listen to Beethoven.

It's easier to be creative if you've got other people to play with.

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.

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.

The most creative people have learned to tolerate the slight discomfort of indecision for much longer and so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.

...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.

The British fans are liable to suddenly be talking to you about something that you don't know how you got into the conversation. I think it's something to do with the fact that they've been watching you for so many years sort of you telling your story.

High creativity is responding to situations without critical thought.

Loving your neighbour as much as yourself is practically bloody impossible? You might as well have a commandment that states,'Thou shalt fly'.

Why write about the past? Well, there's more of it.

If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick,

We need to be in the open mode when we are pondering a problem, but, once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it.

Ask yourself, "When does this decision have to be taken?" and having answered it, defer the decision until then, in order to give yourself maximum pondering time.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

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 are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies... Do it in the 'closed' mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the 'open' mode... because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.

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

When I was in school, I was beaten every 30 minutes. It never did me any harm except for some psychological mal-adjustments and blurred vision.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The World is insane. With tiny spots of sanity, here and there... Not the other way around!

When you've only got few days of rehearsal before you're in the studio, it's wonderful to start off with people that you have good, friendly, tolerable relationships to start with, for the simple reason that you don't have to spend 24 hours figuring out how sensitive they are, and can you give them a line reading, or how do you have to give them direction.

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

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

The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen, the feeling that whatever happens, it's okay... you're either free to play, or you're not.

It’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.

A lot of humour is about just enjoying life and spontaneity and because you make a joke that puts somebody down - we're always teasing each other. It's with affection. It's nasty teasing that we - not all teasing; nasty teasing you cut out.

Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.

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.

Political correctness is a bit like a granny, a maiden aunt arriving at a party when everyone's having a good time. And she comes in, they all start sort of buttoning up and becoming self-conscious and behaving properly and then when she leaves, you can have fun again.

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

Tension is wonderful for making people laugh.

When we hold a World Championship for a particular sport, we invite teams from other countries to play as well.

Creativity is not the possession of some special talent. It’s about the willingness to play.

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

I'm very odd 'cause I think there's more than just a materialist planet, a materialist, reductionist planet.

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.

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

Bureaucrats shouldn't be in charge of comedy.

He who laughs most, learns best.

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

I'm not sure what's going on in Britain. I don't know what's going on in London. Because London is no longer an English city, and that's how they got the Olympics. I mean, they said, "We're the most cosmopolitan city on Earth," but it doesn't feel English.

I don't want to hurt people.

This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.

The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.

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.

Muslims, who have a completely different value system, come to the West, then they should accept that there are certain basic values in the West intrinsic to our culture. Just as I wouldn't suggest that any Westerner walk down the streets of Saudi Arabia in a bikini.

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