John Cleese Quotes

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.

And now for something completely different.

I have always noticed that any kind of pressure narrows my awareness and stunts my curiosity, because once I apply my nose to the grindstone I find it difficult to stick it up in the air again to smell the flowers. Of course a degree of obsession often produces the best work; but it does not produce the best life.

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

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.]

I noticed years ago that when people (myself definitely included) are anxious they tend to busy themselves with irrelevant activities, because these distract from and therefore reduce their actual experience of anxiety. To stay perfectly still is to feel the fear at its maximum intensity, so instead you scuttle around doing things as though you are, in some mysterious way, short of time.

I realised that I really disliked him, and I knew exactly why: he didn’t know the difference between being solemn and being serious.

As Hindus say, the mind is like a chattering, drunken monkey.

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

Всъщност самоиронията с право се приема за здравословна, а и всички предпочитаме хората, които не се вземат прекалено на сериозно.

"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."

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

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

I greatly admire first-class mimics’ super-sensitive powers of observation, the extraordinary accuracy with which they observe vocal production, inflexions, rhythms of speech, facial expressions and body language, all those tiny, unique traits which they can then reproduce so precisely. But I also can’t help wondering whether they are, unconsciously, observing others closely in the hope they can find something there that they can “borrow” and incorporate into their own personality structure, to strengthen their sense of self. Perhaps it’s an extreme form of the desire most people display early in their lives to find role models. Of course, once impersonators have developed this ability, they are rewarded by the delight they produce in an audience, whether they are at a party with friends, or earning a living on television, so they have no reason to stop, even though its original purpose has never really been accomplished.

We left the Bentley and Tim at a garage, and Alan and I travelled back to Brussels to hire a much less magnificent vehicle. When we picked Tim up the next morning, he told us that he’d spent the night in his room with a ‘bird’. Intrigued, we questioned him closely, and learned that he had been woken in the middle of the night by a strange, rather alarming noise and that when he had put the light on he had discovered a turkey vomiting on the mantelpiece. He’d thought of complaining but found that his phrase book did not cover this contingency.