Top 15 Michael Palin Quotes

You can't get a suit of armour and a rubber chicken just like that. You have to plan ahead.

Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life

I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.

Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!

Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.

Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.

As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.

I enjoy writing, I enjoy my house, my family and, more than anything I enjoy the feeling of seeing each day used to the full to actually produce something. The end.

[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all.

The Buddhist version of poverty is a situation where you have nothing to contribute.

My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.

It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them.

I feel this evening that I am too hopelessly and happily corrupted by the richness of London life to ever be right for Dorset, or vice-versa.

"12.00 midnight: whilst soaking in my bath I hear a distant shout. "I'm going to bed, but I don't necessarily have to go alo-o-ne." It's Dr Chapman in the passage. He repeats the line three times, like someone selling scrap iron and it recedes along the corridor."