Top 198 Quotes & Sayings by John Cleese
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English actor John Cleese.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.
Filming takes a lot out of you. It really does. It's immensely demanding, and you have to put the rest of your life in the icebox until you do your final shot.
A man will give up almost anything except his suffering.
The Americans all love 'The Holy Grail', and the English all love 'Life Of Brian', and I'm afraid on this one, I side with the English.
He who laughs most, learns best.
I think you can write very good comedy without a partner, but what I love about it, working with a partner, is that you get to places you'd never get on your own. It's like when God was designing the world and decided we couldn't have children without a partner; it was a way of mixing up the genes so you'd get a more interesting product.
Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.
I'm not saying Obama is right on everything. Of course not. He may be wrong on a number of things. But what I do know is that he behaves like a very, very sane man almost all the time.
If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth.
Now most people do not want an ordinary life in which they do a job well, earn the respect of their collaborators and competitors, bring up a family and have friends. That's not enough any more, and I think that is absolutely tragic - and I'm not exaggerating - that people feel like a decent, ordinary, fun life is no longer enough.
When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.
If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'
I think it's because in America you always get the sense that if you fail, you can just pack up your things and go somewhere else and try again. But in England, it's so geographically small that if somebody succeeds here, it reduces your chances of succeeding.
I was always a sports nut but I've lost interest now in whether one bunch of mercenaries in north London is going to beat another bunch of mercenaries from west London.
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.
My compulsion to always be working has become less strong and my current business is purely down to this enormous alimony. If I wasn't doing this I'd be making documentaries about wildlife and other subjects that interest me.
I want to write a book which is the history of comedy.
I just think that sometimes we hang onto people or relationships long after they've ceased to be of any use to either of you. I'm always meeting new people, and my list of friends seems to change quite a bit.
God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.
I'm always meeting new people, and my list of friends seems to change quite a bit.
Who's ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!
I was very sad to hear of the death of Ronnie Barker, who was such a warm, friendly and encouraging presence to have when I started in television. He was also a great comic actor to learn from.
The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.
English television from the Fifties to the Nineties was the least bad in the world, and now it's just as bad as it is anywhere.
I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother, who was supremely self-centred. She was hilariously self-centred. She did not really take interest in anything that didn't immediately affect her.
I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.
England is a fairly envious little country and it's embodied in the press. They don't like anyone being more distinguished than they are.
For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what God can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.
I would say that I began with a very edgy, very driven personality and after a sufficient amount of therapy over many, many years, I managed to become rather relaxed and happy.
A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people.
I have several times made a poor choice by avoiding a necessary confrontation.
The English contribution to world cuisine - the chip.
I can never do better than Fawlty Towers whatever I do. Now I very much want to teach young talent some rules of the game.
Well, the only way I can get a leading-man role is if I write it.
Michael Palin decided to give up on his considerable comedy talents to make those dreadfully tedious travel shows. Have you ever tried to watch one?
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
Most of the bad taste I've been accused of has been generic bad taste; it's been making fun of an idea as opposed to a person.
I think that money spoils most things, once it becomes the primary motivating force.
In Britain, girls seem to be either bright or attractive. In America, that's not the case. They're both.
The most creative people have this childlike facility to play.
The thrill I got discovering Buster Keaton when I was growing up was so exciting. He was one of the greats.
I don't miss London much. I find it crowded, vast and difficult to get around. Cabs are incredibly expensive.
Don't let anyone tell you what you ought to like... Some wines that some experts think are absolutely exquisite don't appeal to me at all.
Sci-fi has never really been my bag. But I do believe in a lot of weird things these days, such as synchronicity. Quantum physics suggests it's possible, so why not?
Wine is wonderful stuff. But so many people are put off by the snobbery of it.
I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family, it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner, everyone knows everyone, and you're there and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing.
If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
I love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?'
Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.
You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change.
It seems astounding to me now that the video games are perhaps as important as the movie themselves. And people will spend 2 or 3 years obsessing about the video game in exactly the same way that they'd be obsessing about the movie if they were working on that.
I think that sometimes you do something that makes a small group of people laugh, which is all we were trying to do; we were just trying to make each other laugh.
Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.
Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
The sad thing about true stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it.
Creativity is not the possession of some special talent.
It’s about the willingness to play.
There are 3 basic differences between we British and you Americans. One, we speak English, and you don't. Two, when we have a "World Championship", we invite teams from other nations. Three, when you meet the British head of State, you only have to get down on one knee.
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.
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