Monty Python's Quotes & Sayings

At the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in 2012, just a fortnight after the murder of the American ambassador in Benghazi, President Obama talked about the YouTube video his administration were then still saying was behind the attacks. Talking about the excerpt ofa film called Innocence of Muslims, the President of the United States said, before the world's assembly, 'The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.' He didn't say why it 'must not' belong to them any more than it 'must not' belong to the South Park creators who made The Book of Mormon or the ageing Monty Python team who made The Life of Brian. But the question was left to dangle. — Douglas Murray

I was always a fan of the old-style comics. I loved vaudeville. I loved Milton Berle, Dick Shawn, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles, Charlie Callas, all those guys. Hilarious. I love the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies, and Abbott & Costello. My television influences were 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' 'Benny Hill,' and 'Hee Haw.' — Larry The Cable Guy

Monty Python crowd; half of them came from Cambridge, and half of them came from Oxford. But, there seems to be this jewel, this sort of two headed tradition of doing comedy, of doing sketches, and that kind of thing. — Rowan Atkinson

Come see the violence inherit in the system!! Help Help I'm being oppressed!! — Monty Python And The Holy Grail

Come see the violence inherent in the system, HELP I'm being repressed! — Monty Python And The Holy Grail

One question about a joke is, how well is the strangeness of the situation resolved? At 'The New Yorker', we retain a lot of incongruity, tapping the playful part of the mind - Monty Python-type stuff. We also try to use humor as a vehicle for communicating ideas. Not editorial comment, but observation. — Robert Mankoff

You can start any 'Monty Python' routine and people finish it for you. Everyone knows it like shorthand. — Robin Williams

You know, there are many people in the country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane. Some of them were born sane. Some of them became sane later in their lives. — Graham Chapman

I love 'Monty Python,' 'Black Adder,' 'Fawlty Towers.' I'm a huge fan of British comedy. — Isla Fisher

My dad is into movies, and they let me watch movies. I was obsessed with Monty Python when I was in preschool - I don't know why. — Charlie Tahan

If a song is funny and absurd, and it sounds great, it's just going to be that much funnier. And there's no better example of that than 'Monty Python.' — Seth MacFarlane

Growing up, I watched shows such as 'Blackadder' and 'Monty Python' with my parents. — Mathew Baynton

Analytic philosophy has spent the last seventy years engaged in two successive revolts. If you didn't know this, don't feel bad -- philosophers engaged in revolt look pretty much exactly like philosophers not engaged in revolt. They go to the office, teach introduction to philosophy, make a few phone calls, have office hours, work on a rough draft, and head home. There's no storming of the parliament building, ripping up of city streets, or lobbing of Molotov cocktails for your revolting philosopher, or, I should say, the philosopher in revolt.
"Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python — Gary L. Hardcastle

Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith. I spent three months studying every John Hughes teen movie and memorizing all the key lines of dialogue. Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive. You could say I covered all the bases. I studied Monty Python. And not just Holy Grail, either. Every single one of their films, albums, and books, and every episode of the original BBC — Ernest Cline

I love the English. My God, they brought us 'Benny Hill,' 'Monty Python,' 'The Office,' Neville Chamberlain. — Seth MacFarlane

I would really like to do a movie. Schedule-wise I don't know when exactly, but I think it would be great to do a Portlandia movie. Some of my favorite television shows have done it and they've been great. Like Monty Python. I think it would be great. — Fred Armisen

Run away. Me and Monty Python. — Jim Butcher

The earliest stand-up comedy I was aware of was Bill Cosby. I watched Saturday Night Live as soon as I was aware of it, and Monty Python used to be on PBS at weird hours, so I used to try to watch that. And I loved George Carlin on SNL, that was the first stand-up I ever really remember seeing on TV. And then Steve Martin. I guess I was in fifth or sixth grade when Steve Martin showed up, and he was instantly my idol. And Richard Pryor around the same time too, I sort of became aware of him, though I don't remember the first time I saw him. — Louis C.K.

Head coach of the England team demands management skills that Brian does not have. We had a head coach who wanted one thing, other coaches who wanted other things. The players hadn't a clue what was going on. Somehow we'd managed to turn our World Cup campaign into a Monty Python sketch - called The Life of Brian. — Lawrence Dallaglio

What the holy hand grenade was that? — Josephine Angelini

Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand. — Eric Idle

But as a kid, I loved 'Monty Python.' My Dad was a devout watcher. We used to watch it when we ate dinner! — Wes Bentley

The middle way is still driving on the wrong side of the road; it still permits the killing of the fox for pleasure. One cannot kill half a fox. Like Monty Python parrot, a fox torn apart by hounds remains dead, deceased and off its perch for ever. Before the fox has been dispatched - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly - it will have suffered the agonies of the pursuit by animals four times its size and four times its strength. The middle way is a compromise that still seriously compromises the welfare of the fox. — Lyndon Harrison, Baron Harrison

I knew Richard E. Grant, and I went to him and said "Would you like to [play Kafka in the film]?" and he said yeah, and then suddenly I had all these people who were happy to come along. We got a little bit of money from Scottish Screen to pay for it. I got so many favors because I knew people in the business. I was in a remarkably good position. I got so many favors from people. I got the Monty Python technical people. — Peter Capaldi

I love crazy names. It comes right from Monty Python and Woody Allen - nothing in the world makes me giggle more than a funny name. It became a thing I started doing when I wrote. If a person came into a store and said, "How much is this apple?" that person would have an insane name. — Michael Schur

'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives. — Scott Adsit

I remember reading Dave Barry for the first time and being like oh my God I can't believe you can do this. Watching Mel Brooks and Monty Python and SNL and all that stuff really informed me as a writer and then at high school I started a satire magazine and the college like The Lampoon really introduced me to like you know a lot of very like-minded people who really wanted to like comedy was the center of their lives. — Nicholas Stoller

Monty Python only became valuable when it was sold to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in America. They didn't pay much either, but the series has been shown repeatedly, which led to lucrative tapes, CDs and DVDs. — Eric Idle

I grew up a huge fan of The Three Stooges and Monty Python, so somebody getting slapped in the face with a fish, or falling out of a chair, or running into a door, or tripping over their own feet and eating it, is all stuff I find really, really funny. — Thomas Sadoski

As a Jew reading about Jesus, I thought, 'He's a pretty good guy.' It's the same conclusion Monty Python drew in 'Life of Brian' - if people actually live what he did, it would be a pretty good world. But Jesus and Christianity have a tenuous relationship at best. — David Javerbaum

Kilimanjaro is a pretty tricky climb you know, most of it's up until you reach the very very top, and then it tends to slope away rather sharply. — Graham Chapman

'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book. — Libba Bray

Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?
Brought peace! — Graham Chapman

I'm a big fan of Disney's animated movies, or at least of most of them. I don't know what it is, but the songs get stuck in my head. There is a Disney song for every situation you encounter in life. Some people quote The Godfather. Some quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I quote Walt Disney. Those are the true classics. — Judah Smith

The whole idea of creating saints, it's pure 'Monty Python.' They have to clock up two miracles. — Richard Dawkins

Most 'Monty Python' fans are, of course, baby boomers, who have long been a nostalgic lot and are growing more so as they totter toward old age. — Terry Teachout

Sir Bedevere: "Tell me, what do you do with witches?"
Crowd: "Burn, burn them up!"
Sir Bedevere: "And what do you burn apart from witches?"
Villager: "More witches! — Monty Python And The Holy Grail

Comedy. It was just huge in my house. Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness, Monty Python and all those James Bond movies were highly regarded. — Mike Myers

Then I heard a noise I'd never heard in real life before. The kind of noise you hear in movies when horse's hooves are beating on cobblestones or the members of Monty Python were cracking together coconuts. — Kristen Ashley

Finally one evening somebody suggested Python (a great name for an untrustworthy impresario, I thought), someone else added Monty, which had connotations of our greatest World War II general, there was hysteria, and history was made. A — John Cleese

Monty Python is like catnip for nerds. Once you get them started quoting it, they are constitutionally incapable of feeling depressed. — Kevin Hearne

No day of my life passes without someone saying the words 'Monty Python' to me. It's not bad. — Eric Idle

Remember that film 'Sliding Doors,' when John Hannah woos Gwyneth Paltrow by reciting Monty Python sketches? I can tell you now that doesn't work, so that film's wrong. — Stephen Merchant

Everybody uses pop culture as a shorthand. You might make an obscure reference to Monty Python or Iron Eagle that only some people will get, but if they do it conveys a world of meaning. — Ernest Cline

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? — Graham Chapman

I loved Monty Python for the wordplay
this sense that you didn't have to squash your intelligence to be funny. In fact, you could walk right into your intelligence and nerdiness and self-doubt, and that could be funny. — George Saunders

Similarly, if we ask "What have philosophers ever done for us?" we get involved in the following dialogue:
"Well, their examples help us to decide what we think about issues we haven't thought about before."
"Oh, yeah, well, that goes without saying, doesn't it?"
"And their examples help us discover whether we really believe what we say we believe, or not."
" Yeah, all right. I'll grant you that their examples help us to work out what we think, and to think better. But apart from helping us to work out what we think, clarifying our views, and helping us to solve hard problems, what do philosophers ever do for us?"
"Well, their examples are amusing."
James Taylor, "Why is a Philosopher Like a Python? — Gary L. Hardcastle

One night, I pissed into an empty wine bottle so I could continue watching Monty Python, and suddenly thought 'I've never tasted my own piss,' so I drank a little. It looked just like Orvieto Classico and tasted of nearly nothing — Brian Eno

Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python. — Alice Cooper

I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is more scathing, more cruel, as illustrated by Monty Python and Little Britain. — Helen Mirren

Father Pierre, why did you stay on in this colonial Campari-land, where the clink of glasses mingles with the murmur of a million mosquitoes, where waterfalls and whiskey wash away the worries of a world-weary whicker, where gin and tonics jingle in a gyroscopic jubilee of something beginning with J? — Graham Chapman

On the phone
Bookseller: Hello Ripping Yarns.
Customer: Do you have any mohair wool?
Bookseller: Sorry, we're not a yarns shop, we're a bookshop.
Customer: You're called Ripping Yarns.
Bookseller: Yes, that's 'yarns' as in stories.
Customer: Well it's a stupid name.
Bookseller: It's a Monty Python reference.
Customer: So you don't sell wool?
Bookseller: No.
Customer: Hmf. Ridiculous.
Bookseller: ... but we do sell dead parrots.
Customer: What?
Bookseller: Parrots. Dead. Extinct. Expired. Would you like one?
Customer: Erm, no.
Bookseller: Ok, well if you change your mind, do call back. — Jen Campbell

We are known to be anti-authoritarian, anti-institutional, and notoriously anti-religious - more likely to quote Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Monty Python, or Star Trek than the Bible. — Gudjon Bergmann

I was greatly influenced by 'The Goons' and 'Monty Python' reconstituting what comedy was - it could come from a funny word, not just a set up and a pay-off. I liked the zaniness; they were satirical, slightly saucy and very literary in their references. — Sanjeev Bhaskar

Many businessmen fail to understand Python principles
the ultimate absurdity was an offer from America to buy the 'format' of the Python shows, that is, Monty Python without the Pythons
corporate methods do not have the conceptual framework to deal with an anarchist collective, run by intelligent and arrogant comedians who have proved that their method works. — Robert Hewison

Edward: "Take that, you beef-witted varlet!"
Gracie: "Who are you calling beef-witted?" she laughed at him. "Your mother was a hamster, and your father stank of elderberries! — Cynthia Hand

As a little kid when I would watch 'Monty Python' ... that would just blow me away because it was just so silly and absurd, but so intelligent, and I loved that. — Reggie Watts

I just play to progressive audiences. You know, if they're watching Discovery Channel, History Channel, that kind of thing, "Monty Python" have already laid the groundwork. They're known around the world. People like that kind of surrealist, left-field humor, and that's what I do. And "Saturday Night Live," a lot of American humor. "The Simpsons," above all, the weird, left-field humor, which I love. And sardonic. So that's all I'm doing. I find that audience, and they're in every developed country around the world. — Eddie Izzard

Boyle looked like a Monty Python in drag. Then she opened her mouth and this epic noise came ripping out of her. Within a week, she was the most celebrated person on earth, an — Steve Almond

We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went. — Terry Gilliam

I come home from work, and depending on the day or depending on what was going on, if I needed to adjust, I'd just meditate or play guitar or watch some 'Monty Python.' — Brent Sexton

I grew up watching Letterman, 'Seinfeld,' 'SNL,' and Monty Python movies. But nothing made me want to get into comedy more than when 'Mr. Show' started airing. — Joe Mande

I've always been more of a nerdy, academic type. I loved 'Star Wars' growing up. I have three older brothers, so they were a big influence on me. We loved 'Danger Mouse,' and we love 'Monty Python'. We loved any kind of British comedy and 'Wallace and Gromit' and all of that stuff. — Mara Wilson

Monty Python: A documentary series on everyday life in Great Britain. — Frank Portman

Gilliam says of that time, 'I thought at least getting the Catholics, Protestants and Jews all protesting against our movie was fairly ecumenical on our part. We only missed out on the Muslims. And I thought that was pretty fantastic to see, marching in the streets with placards against Brian. We had achieved something useful. — Robert Sellers

A tractor-trailer overturned on U.S. 129 in Gainesville, Ga., "the poultry capital of the world," back in January. None of the drivers involved in the accident were hurt, but avian passengers in the trailer were killed, and Sarah Segal has asked the Georgia Department of Transportation for permission to a build a ten-foot-tall tombstone in their honor. The monument would read, "In memory of the dozens of terrified chickens who died as a result of a truck crash. Go Vegan." It would include an image of a chicken. PETA supports her initiative. Monty Python could not be reached for comment. — Anonymous

'Monty Python' is now more recognised by the films than by the TV series. — Mark Gatiss

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government — Monty Python And The Holy Grail

I was pretty much a child of 'Monty Python.' I grew up loving that type of humor and even structured a lot of humor in the same fashion. — Michael Jai White

At the end of Season Four of 'Mr. Show,' instead of doing another season, everyone just thought they wanted to go and do a movie. Kind of like Monty Python. Monty Python went right into 'And Now For Something Completely Different,' and everyone kind of compared 'Mr. Show' to Monty Python. — Scott Aukerman

I just don't know when we all decided that if it doesn't fit in a Happy Meal box, it's not for kids. I remember flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, and I grew up watching Monty Python. I think that kids can handle a lot more than we give them credit for, especially when it comes to the absurd. — Gore Verbinski

I have a weird sense of humour. My dad's the same. We love watching 'Monty Python' together. — Miranda Kerr

I like that feeling of discombobulation that comes in creating an absurd world that doesn't make sense. 'Monty Python' does a good job of it; 'Bugs Bunny,' too. — Reggie Watts

We adored it, and discussed it, and swapped jokes from it, and it made us feel more alive. In some way, it was cathartic: it exhilarated us by lifting us up above our everyday frustrations and boredoms. It gave us a liberating perspective on this odd event unfolding around us, called 'our life.' And when, years later, I became bewildered by the reception of Monty Python by some of our looniest fans, I suddenly realised they were experiencing exactly the combination of emotions that had rendered me such a devotee of the Goons, and so I was able to forgive them. — John Cleese

I'd grown up loving English films. I was a huge Monty Python fanatic as a kid. — Alessandro Nivola

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. — Michael Palin

That was sort of the 'Second City' approach, which was try to be intelligent and assume your audience is intelligent. We were influenced by 'Monty Python,' too, which would have philosophers in a wrestling match. — Joe Flaherty