Ben Elton Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 64 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ben Elton.
Famous Quotes By Ben Elton
People who get through life dependent on other people's possessions are always the first to lecture you on how little possessions count. — Ben Elton
For the past seventeen years I have been experimenting with lager. I am a lager user and one drug leads to another. If you do lager, as night follows day, you'll end up doing Kentucky Fried Chicken. — Ben Elton
When the phone rings at 2.15am in the morning it's unlikely to be heralding something pleasant. What chance is there of its being good news? None. Only someone bad would ring at such an hour. Or someone with bad news. — Ben Elton
The massive machine bore down on them. Nearly fourteen feet long and six wide, it seemed to completely fill the bridge. Almost a ton and a half of wood, glass, rubber, brass and steel, a monster, roaring and trumpeting as it approached its kill, the great shining black fender arches framing its huge goggling eyes. The thrusting tusks of its sprung-leaf suspension threatened to skewer any soft flesh and young bone that lay in its path. Black smoke billowed from its rear. Sparks spat from behind its grille. No dragon of ancient legend could have seemed more terrifying or more deadly. — Ben Elton
If I did things for the money, I'd have done adverts in the 1980s, when I was hot enough to be offered them, and 'Police Academy 6,' which I was asked to write. — Ben Elton
I don't know what people who I've never met think about me. Some have written horrible things, some have written nice things - but I'm proud of the fact I've remained close to everyone I've ever worked with. — Ben Elton
To positively discriminate in favour of groups that have been negatively discriminated against in the past. — Ben Elton
People had got used to the planet dying.
They didn't care anymore, it had been lingering on for too long. The Earth was like some aged and slightly disgusting relative that just got sicker and sicker and yet refused to die. Requiring more and more attention, growing bigger tumours, bursting nastier sores and soiling its sheets ever more often. An embarrassment and an inconvenience, a constant reminder of family guilt. — Ben Elton
A society sufficiently sophisticated to produce the internal combustion engine has not had the sophistication to develop cheap and efficient public transport?'
'Yes, boss... it's true. There's hardly any buses, the trains are hopelessly underfunded, and hence the entire population is stuck in traffic — Ben Elton
There are lots of things I could have done for the money, but I've made a great living doing the things I want to do. — Ben Elton
The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it. — Ben Elton
Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them. — Ben Elton
Kingsley watched her disappear from the room, wondering if his heart would break. Logic informed him that of course it would not. The heart was no more than a muscle, a pump which distributed blood about the body; it had nothing whatsoever to do with a man's emotions. But if that was the case, why did it ache so? — Ben Elton
And through all that dreadful darkness she had remembered him. He who loved her. He who still loved her. Who would always love her. — Ben Elton
Yes, OK, farty is a silly word. I wish I'd never used it. I'm 34. Perhaps it was a word for my 20s. — Ben Elton
My parents were secular. I am an atheist. — Ben Elton
You're mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund — Ben Elton
She spoke loudly in order to be heard above the noise of personal communitainers that were thudding and banging all around them. Some people used earphones, some didn't, clearly believing that as many people as possible should be given the opportunity to appreciate their musical taste. That, combined with the mass leakage from the headsets, created a terrible din and even discreet private conversations had to be conducted at a yell. — Ben Elton
You didn't wake up, your dreams just changed gear. — Ben Elton
If only the strength of the love that people feel when it is reciprocated could be as intense and obsessive as the love we feel when it is not; then marriages would be truly made in heaven. — Ben Elton
The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now ... cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it. — Ben Elton
It was not the first time people had taken a good square look at Armaggedon and decided that they would prefer it to happen to somebody else. Ever since Noah built the Ark, the seductive notion that it is possible to opt out, to stand on the sidelines whilst global cataclysm passess you by, has exercised a strong pull. — Ben Elton
Leaders should never, ever try to look cool - that's for dictators — Ben Elton
This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence. — Ben Elton
So far no one has claimed responsibility. — Ben Elton
I loved writing 'Two Brothers' more than anything else I have written. It's the first book I've written that I've always known I wanted to write. Having said that, it also kept me awake at nights. — Ben Elton
I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality. — Ben Elton
We've just lost our way, that's all. But what if you could give us a chance to do better? Just one chance? One single move in the great game of history? What's your best shot? What would you consider to be the greatest mistake in world history and, more to the point, what single thing would you do to prevent it? — Ben Elton
The reactionary point of view was always so easy to put, the complex, radical argument always so easy to put down. — Ben Elton
And roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is my personal signature dish. — Ben Elton
We've all got to look at ourselves, start with yourself, that's all you can do. I believe that we can act responsibly as a group, it's just that there are vested interests telling us not to bother. — Ben Elton
Any closer would unravel her mystery, the very thing which made her so truly beautiful ... It was her mystery that he adored. He was in love with everything that he did not know about her ... No real sexual encounter could ever match the secret one that he could nurture in his imagination ... No living flesh could ever be the erotic equal of flesh kept private, untouchable and unknowable — Ben Elton
I try hard not to preach, but I get carried away, which is a mistake, but it's a risk worth running. — Ben Elton
The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value. — Ben Elton
No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi. — Ben Elton
I'm easy to work with, not a pushover, but I respond to criticism and find it inspiring. — Ben Elton
Comedy will always be central to what I do, it's just an instinct for me, but I am a writer and always have been. — Ben Elton
Screw humanity. I don't give the whole stinking bunch of us more than a couple of generations and good riddance. The universe is better off without us. — Ben Elton
I find the fact that billionaires are quoted as if the fact that they are billionaires gives them some kind of wisdom is outrageous. — Ben Elton
I exercise hard and the reason I do is so that I can earn the things I like to consume. — Ben Elton
With privilege comes responsibility, you must understand that. People expect us to lead by example and we shall not disappoint them. — Ben Elton
I did not vote Labour because they've heard of Oasis and nobody is going to vote Tory because William Hague has got a baseball cap. — Ben Elton
People in that crowd want to make poverty history, but NOT if they have to pay for it themselves — Ben Elton
History is made by people. And the majority of people are arseholes. Which is I suppose why the majority of history has been so disastrous. — Ben Elton
Artists don't create society, they reflect it — Ben Elton
The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth. — Ben Elton
New York will always seem more real than anything Britain has to offer. It is strange that, although the majority of British people have never seen a skate-boarding body-popper, an exploding fire-hydrant, or anybody dunk a doughnut, these things seem infinitely more immediate and happening images than that jar of Horlicks which has stood in the cupboard for 40 years — Ben Elton
What a world, eh? Sometimes I wish I could just live somewhere on Radio 4. — Ben Elton
Because they're twins. they've got each other, wolf. This is a tough town in a tough world. But no matter how tough it get - our boys will always have each other. — Ben Elton
Beyond love, beyond unrequited love, perhaps even beyond any other passion known to humanity, deep, deep in the depths of the turgid, clinging, swamplike pit of despair that lies dormant within every soul, lurks JEALOUSY. Jealousy, that most demeaning and debilitating of emotions. Jealousy, which can double the strength of the love upon which it is based, but whilst doubling it, warp and pervert it, untill it is no longer recognizable as the thing of beauty it once was. Jealous love is no more like true love than Mr Hyde was like Dr Jekyll or a stagnant swamp is like a freshwater lake. — Ben Elton
Ironies. Hubris, pride, comes before a fall. When — Ben Elton
[H]e was damned if he was going to water down his arguments simply to satisfy the preference of the mob for dogma and ignorance. — Ben Elton
You think I look like a teletubby? — Ben Elton
I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition - and I have never suffered from it. — Ben Elton
A time when the miracles of technology were still virile and exciting: steam engines and flying machines, not smart phones and cosmetic surgery. When there were still wildernesses left to explore and mountains left unclimbed — Ben Elton
Time is not linear. It does not go along on a steady course like a road from London to York. It does not have a beginning and it does not have an end, nor is it the same to one person as it is to another, nor to two planets or a million stars. It is different in all circumstances. Because it is relative. (pg 333) — Ben Elton
I'm lucky because the strongest emotion I have ever felt is being in love, and that definitely informs my writing. — Ben Elton
My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they've read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again! — Ben Elton
You ... you don't look like a Jew,' she heard him mumble. 'What does a Jew look like, you fatuous bastard'? - 'Do you think I should have a nose like a boat hook, you stupid old prick! — Ben Elton
They were the Saturday Club, a secret society of which only the four of them were aware and which none other could join. — Ben Elton
Professor Sengupta had the self-satisfied habit common to many academics of pretending an intellectual equality with his audience in order to happily demonstrate his own superiority. — Ben Elton
I don't consider myself Jewish. I am half-Jewish by race but not through my mother. — Ben Elton