John Cleese Quotes

The general principle is this: the bigger the leap, the longer the creative period is likely to be.

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.

toffs could get up to speed. But Ben at least knew roughly

We moved back to the Raffles', then back to Devon (to Horrabridge, where I saw a spider so big I could hear its footsteps).

"Един от професорите ни описваше лекциите като "мистичен процес, в който бележките от тетрадката на лектора преминават в тетрадката на студента, без да преминат през ума на нито един от двамата"."

I found Toronto an immensely likeable city, spacious and gentle and slightly dignified, but in a low-key, friendly way. The only people who didn’t seem to think much of it were its inhabitants, who could hardly wait for you to ask directions, because that gave them the perfect opportunity to apologise for it. What they were apologising for I never understood. I think they felt uninteresting, compared with America. I took the opposite view; I remember reading about the doctrine of American “Exceptionalism” and thinking that what I liked so much about Canadians was that they consider themselves unexceptional. This modest, unthreatening attitude seems to produce a nation that is stable, safe, decent and well respected. It’s just a shame that for seven months of the year it’s so cold that only Canadians would put up with it.

What's the bleedin' point?

It is easier to do trivial things that are urgent, than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking.

People are changed not by exhortations to do things but by experiences... they may be changed by experience, in a way that could never be achieved with mere good advice.

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.

So if I may give a word of advice to any young writer who, despite the odds, wants to take a shot at being funny, it is this: Steal. Steal an idea that you know is good, and try to reproduce it in a setting that you know and understand. It will become sufficiently different from the original because you are writing it, and by basing it on something good, you will be learning some of the rules of good writing as you go along. Great artists may merely be “influenced by” other artists, but comics “steal” and then conceal their loot.

If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?

After I’d been in his class a few weeks he looked at me thoughtfully and said: ‘Ah . . . Cleeeese . . .’ ‘Sir?’ ‘Your housssemaster ssays you’re intelligent.’ ‘Oh!’ ‘. . . I don’t sssee it mysssself . . .’ I wasn’t hurt or surprised. I took his remark as pure information. It was only when I recalled this many years later that I found myself thinking, ‘What was he intending to achieve with this remark?’ And I came to the conclusion that it made him feel better about himself – the same reason people read snide gossip columns.

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.

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. This irrational claptrap, coming as it did from a swarthy, excitable, plump Celtic demi-dwarf, struck me not just as thoroughly impertinent but also as a noisy and ignorant attempt to undermine the most basic principles of the Enlightenment.