Best 172 quotes of John Cleese on MyQuotes

All humour is critical, you know? You make stupid jokes. I mean, stupidity is an infirmity, isn't it?

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

A lot of humour is about just enjoying life and spontaneity and because you make a joke that puts somebody down - we're always teasing each other. It's with affection. It's nasty teasing that we - not all teasing; nasty teasing you cut out.

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.

A man will give up almost anything except his suffering.

And now for something completely different...

A satisfied customer. We should have him stuffed.

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

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.

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

Basil Fawlty was an easy character for me. For some reason, portraying a mean, uptight, incompetent bully comes naturally to me.

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.

British press think entirely in clichés, and when they do come across creative work, they think that it must be based on something, because they don't realize that you can create things that aren't based on things.

Bureaucrats shouldn't be in charge of comedy.

But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.

By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.

Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.

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

Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to IQ, provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level.

Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.

Creativity is not the possession of some special talent. It’s about the willingness to play.

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.

Either people walk round dressed as chickens or they listen to Beethoven.

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.

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.

Everything in comedy's got to be exactly right, which is why making a comedic film is kind of a difficult process, because, for most of the two years of shooting it and editing it and reshooting and all of that, it's not quite right. And it's only when you just at the end, you put the final polish on it, it becomes really funny again.

Filming is like a long air journey: there's so much hanging around and boredom that they keep giving you food.

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.

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.

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

He who laughs most, learns best.

High creativity is responding to situations without critical thought.

I can do anything I want, I'm eccentric!

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 not quite sure what you're supposed to sit.

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.

I don't miss London much. I find it crowded, vast and difficult to get around. Cabs are incredibly expensive.

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

I don't want to have to start being unselfish again. The great thing about being on your own is you do what you damned well like.

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.

If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas

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.

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

I find the Alexander Technique very helpful in my work. Things happen without you trying. They get to be light and relaxed. You must get an Alexander teacher to show it to you.

If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'

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.

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

If you want to know who your friends are, have a major failure.

If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick.

I have a tendency sometimes to get too logical with what I'm writing, just because I want it to be kind of perfect.

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.