Cleese Quotes & Sayings

While you're being creative, nothing is wrong. There's no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the breakthrough. — John Cleese

Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a
mistake. — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

If I like chocolate it won't surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my fridge, but if you find out I've got 16 warehouses full of chocolate, you'd think I was insane. All these rich guys are insane, obsessive compulsive twits obsessed with money - money is all they think about - they're all nuts. — John Cleese

Maps. I was less clueless about the basics of English, though I didn't realise at the time that I was assuming that English grammar was the same as the Latin grammar I had been taught so well. (I remember that the first week I was there, a boy asked me during prep whether ager was second or third declension and I was able to tell him without pausing for thought that ager - a field - was second declension, so it went like annus, but that it dropped the "e," as opposed to agger - a rampart - which was third declension, and retained the "e." "My God," I thought as he walked away, "Captain Lancaster did a good job." My next thought was, "Lucky the boy didn't ask me what a rampart was. ... ") But given that I was teaching ten-year-olds, Geoffrey Tolson's advice to "stay a page ahead" seemed perfectly sound. So I had no reason to believe, as I strode purposefully into the classroom to teach Form III their first history — John Cleese

What's the bleedin' point? — John Cleese

The Americans are so much more positive. They are much more in love with success. In Britain, they're a fairly envious bunch, and they love it if you fail. — John Cleese

It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ Brian Stimpson, Clockwise
— John Cleese

Laughter is a force for democracy. — John Cleese

I can do anything I want, I'm eccentric! — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

I once compiled a list of events that frightened her, and it was quite comprehensive: very loud snoring; low-flying aircraft; church bells; fire engines; trains; buses and lorries; thunder; shouting; large cars; most medium-sized cars; noisy small cars; burglar alarms; fireworks, especially crackers; loud radios; barking dogs; whinnying horses; nearby silent horses; cows in general; megaphones; sheep; corks coming out of sparkling wine bottles; motorcycles, even very small ones; balloons being popped; vacuum cleaners (not being used by her); things being dropped; dinner gongs; parrot houses; whoopee cushions; chiming doorbells; hammering; bombs; hooters; old-fashioned alarm clocks; pneumatic drills; and hairdryers (even those used by her). — John Cleese

We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. — John Cleese

If you really don't know where to start or if you're stuck, start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting. — John Cleese

Ask yourself, "When does this decision have to be taken?" and having answered it, defer the decision until then, in order to give yourself maximum pondering time. — John Cleese

Laughter is the best creative medicine. — John Cleese

To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that's a compliment. — Alice Cooper

Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They're not laughing with us, they are laughing at us. — A.A. Gill

The open mode is a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate, because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done properly. We can play. — John Cleese

Wisdom: Oh, fantastic. We've got an army made up of fairies and Beatles, and we're fighting H. G. Wells' martians and bloody Jack the Rippers. Who's next? Dick Van Dyke? Mr Bean? John Cleese and his dead parrot? — Paul Cornell

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. — John Cleese

The thrill I got discovering Buster Keaton when I was growing up was so exciting. He was one of the greats. — John Cleese

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

The most creative people have learned to tolerate the slight discomfort of indecision for much longer and so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative. — John Cleese

I think that I feel an indignation when I don't understand something. — John Cleese

Mother told me once that some Westonians privately criticised Dad for retreating so soon. They apparently felt it would have been more dignified to have waited a week or so before running away. I think this view misses the essential point of running away, which is to do it the moment the idea has occurred to you. Only an obsessional procrastinator would cry, Let's run for our lives, but not till Wednesday afternoon. — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

When people quote sketches to me, half the time I don't know what they're talking about so I have to sort of go, aha, yes, oh yep, I remember that and lie my way out of it. — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

When you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that's why I don't think there's any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead. — John Cleese

I could take an umbrella and balance it on my chin or on my foot. And I just got interested in that kind of thing. And as I played games more and more and got stronger physically, I just became more coordinated. — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

And it was this location that provides my second memory. (It must come after the first because in it I am now standing up.) I was bitten by a rabbit. Or rather, I was nibbled by a rabbit, but, because I was such a weedy, namby-pamby little pansy, I reacted as though I'd lost a limb. It was the sheer unfairness of it all that so upset me. One minute, I was saying, 'Hello, Mr Bunny!' and smiling at its sweet little face and funny floppy ears. The next, the fucker savaged me. It seemed so gratuitous. What, I asked myself, had I done to the rabbit to deserve this psychotic response? — John Cleese

I could see (though not as clearly as I do now) that one of my biggest problems was me. Because I wanted everyone to like me and to approve of me, I tried to be nice to everyone all the time and this proved a remarkably efficient way of losing control over my life. — John Cleese

In my view, ordinary everyday sanity is harder for "only children" to achieve: they have nothing to moderate or dilute a parent's influence. It must be very liberating to be able to share your parents' attention, and indeed to have fellow offspring with whom you can actually discuss parental behaviour. I'm sure I could have dramatically cut the hours I spent in therapy if I had had a brother (or, better still, a sister) to whom I could have turned and asked, "What the hell has got into her today? — John Cleese

You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change. — John Cleese

I love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?' — John Cleese

I got my first television at Stanford when I was 20, and I used to watch 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'. He played my father on 'Becker,' and he's still one of my heroes. Along with John Cleese, he's my favourite physical comedian. — Ted Danson

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. — John Cleese

It's only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve. — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

I don't understand why very, very rich people want to have even more money than they've already got. — John Cleese

Mrs. Richards: Girl, there's no paper in my room. Why don't you check these things? That's what you're being paid for, isn't it?
Polly: We don't put it in the rooms.
Mrs. Richards: What?
Polly: Well, we keep it in the lounge.
Mrs. Richards: [aghast] In the lounge?
Polly: I'll get you some. Do you want plain ones or ones with our address on it?
Mrs. Richards: Address on it?
Polly: How many sheets? Well, how many are you going to use?
Mrs. Richards: Manager! — John Cleese

When I was a child and I was upset about something, my mother was not capable of containing that emotion, of letting me be upset but reassuring me, of just being with me in a calming way. She always got in a flap, so I not only had my own baby panics, fears and terrors to deal with, but I had to cope with hers, too. Eventually I taught myself to remain calm when I was panicked, in order not to upset her. In a way, she had managed to put me in charge of her. At 18 months old, I was doing the parenting. — John Cleese

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. Even if it's done mainly for show, it's still a start. — John Cleese

[On John Cleese:] He sometimes seems to swat at his own thoughts as if they were bees. — Penelope Gilliatt

Writing is the great skill, the creative skill. The acting is more an interpretative skill. And the thrill for me is the moment when I think of something. And then the challenge is how to get that funny idea to work in terms of the structure and that kind of thing, which is - and that's what I really love doing. — John Cleese

Something about John Cleese was always very unsettled, I felt. There was always something else he wanted to do. He seemed constantly driven by this sense that there was a nirvana somewhere; some unique place where mind, body and soul would be utterly satisfied. — Michael Palin

I want to write a book which is the history of comedy. — John Cleese

You do realize as you grow older that almost nobody knows what they are talking about. — John Cleese

Would you take a billion dollars, if as part of the deal the Earth were made uninhabitable a year after your death? ... well, of course not; you care about your friends, above all your children, any grandchildren. But ... what if the deal calls for the planet to be poisoned a thousand years later? We feel strong obligations to generations in the near future - should we not feel the same way about our children's great-grandchildren and generations beyond them? — John Cleese

Although I had good hand-eye coordination, I was so tall and skinny and muscularly weak that I just was not well coordinated. But what I started to do quite early on was watch some of the great old silent comedians, like Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin, and then later on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. — John Cleese

Aping urbanity,
Oozing with vanity,
Plump as a manatee,
Faking humanity,
Intellectual inanity,
Journalistic calamity,
Fox Noise insanity,
You're a profanity,
Hannity — John Cleese

What is absurd is not the teachings of the founders of religion, it's what followers subsequently make of it. — John Cleese

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

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

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. — John Cleese

The Americans are just more enthusiastic and more likely to engage in hyperbole. — John Cleese

It was an astonishing fantasy but it showed me what even apparently sensible people can believe if they really want to. I — John Cleese

So . . . suddenly there were no tapes of The 1948 Show. It was no more. It was an ex-series. — John Cleese

I've always called myself a writer/performer, not an actor because I basically write what I perform. — John Cleese

Tension is wonderful for making people laugh. — John Cleese

Give your mind as long as possible to come up with something original. — John Cleese

It's easier to be creative if you've got other people to play with. — John Cleese

I've always found life quite difficult to explain to people or to myself. — John Cleese

This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot. — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

The sad thing about true stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it. — John Cleese

Laughter destroys any divisions between people. — John Cleese

I think that money spoils most things, once it becomes the primary motivating force. — John Cleese

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? — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people. — John Cleese

I think we're all born with a sense of humor. Creativity is another thing though. — John Cleese

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

Come to me. I want to plow you like a Calgary driveway at Christmas. — John Cleese

Oh, I could spend my life having this conversation - look - please try to understand before one of us dies — John Cleese

It's too difficult to start right from scratch and try and be funny out of the blue. — John Cleese

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play — John Cleese

It's a plastic surgeon you need, not a doctor — John Cleese

Why write about the past? Well, there's more of it. — John Cleese

It was not fair and therefore unworthy of my respect. It was as simple as that. — John Cleese

But now I began to notice odd moments that suggested he was not the brightest lighthouse on the coastline. For instance, he once got very cross during assembly because he felt the boys had become lazy, and so he demanded that every single boy in the school should improve his ranking in class in the course of the next fortnight. — John Cleese

British journalists tend to believe that people who become good at something do so because they seek fame and fortune. This is because these are the sole motives of people who become British journalists. But some people, operating at higher levels of mental health, pursue activities because they actually love them. — John Cleese

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort. — Terry Gilliam

Creativity is not a talent; it's a way of operating. — John Cleese

When people say 'I'm not a prude, but ... ' what they mean is 'I am a prude, and ... '. — John Cleese

Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating. — John Cleese

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me. — John Cleese

John Cleese ... he cannot sing and keeps a locked piano in his room to prove it. — John Cleese

Only a few things in life matter a little. The rest don't matter at all. — John Cleese

You initially become funny as a kid because you're looking for attention and love. Psychologists think that's all to do with mother abandonment. I think John Cleese has his depressions, and Terry Gilliam's the same. All of us together make one completely insane person. — Eric Idle

The real religion is about the understanding that if we can only still our egos for a few seconds, we might have a chance of experiencing something that is divine in nature. But in order to do that, we have to slice away at our egos and try to get them down to a manageable size, and then still work some practiced light meditation. So real religion is about reducing our egos, whereas all the churches are interested in is egotistical activities, like getting as many members and raising as much money and becoming as important and high-profile and influential as possible. — John Cleese

A man will give up almost anything except his suffering. — John Cleese

Cats are very intelligent at all the things that cats need to be intelligent about. — John Cleese

Muslims, who have a completely different value system, come to the West, then they should accept that there are certain basic values in the West intrinsic to our culture. Just as I wouldn't suggest that any Westerner walk down the streets of Saudi Arabia in a bikini. — John Cleese

I think there are so many activities going on, like mountaineering. You know, you would pay good money not to have to do that, and yet there are people racing out who want to spend their spare time clambering up rocks. — John Cleese

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. — John Cleese

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny. — John Cleese

I was a terrible dancer. I dance like an Englishman. — John Cleese