John Cleese Quotes

If you can't control your own emotions, you're forced to control other people's behaviour. That's why the touchiest, most oversensitive and easily upset must not set the standard for the rest of us .

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.” — John Cleese

Cats are very intelligent at all the things that cats need to be intelligent about.

It seemed as though he had a fundamental belief that the merit of his argument depended on the strength of his feelings about the matter, and since he always felt uncontrollably passionate about everything, then clearly he was always right.

Genuinely good manners are, after all, essentially a way of moderating one’s own egotism, often in the service of considering the egos of others. Even if it’s done mainly for show, it’s still a start. It

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.

The key thing is to start, even if it feels as though you’re forcing yourself through an emotional roadblock.

Too many people confuse being serious with being solemn.

The first time it was my turn to do the shopping, I overindulged my growing taste for exotic food with a bagful of goodies like smoked elk’s liver and chocolate-covered ants and mackerel-and-prune soup and curried walrus testicles. I’d sort of forgotten about the milk and the bread and the eggs. I was never allowed to shop again.

One minute, I was saying, “Hello, Mr. Bunny!” and smiling at its sweet little face and funny floppy ears. The next, the fucker savaged me.

learning from something or someone you admire is not stealing. It’s called “being influenced by.

The problem with political correctness is that comedians have to set the bar according to what we are told by the most touchy, most emotionally unstable and fragile and least stoic people in the country.

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

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

"He (a teacher at school) was the epitome of the Oxonian code of "effortless superiority" whereby to be seen trying really hard to achieve something was in many ways worse than actually failing it."