John Cleese Quotes - Page 3

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.

I think humor is incredibly positive, I think it is life advancing. There's medical research to show that it improves your antibodies. It's all about sense and perspective.

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.

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

It’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.

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

The most creative people have this childlike facility to play.

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.

When you're being stalked by an angry mob with raspberries, the first thing to do is to release a tiger.

I get bored easily. I've been bored most of my life.

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.

When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.

I was a terrible dancer. I dance like an Englishman.

I'm not sure what's going on in Britain. I don't know what's going on in London. Because London is no longer an English city, and that's how they got the Olympics. I mean, they said, "We're the most cosmopolitan city on Earth," but it doesn't feel English.

The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.

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

There's something about watching an animal that puts you in contact with where we came from and what we're still a part of.

I learned a lot of things about literature talking to people at the publishing company. Did you know that about 90 percent of celebrity autobiographies are ghostwritten?

Students who laugh more- learn more. Students who laugh more earn more.

The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen, the feeling that whatever happens, it's okay... you're either free to play, or you're not.

Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.

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

Once we've made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness.

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

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.