Quotes by John Cleese

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

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

“He who laughs most, learns best.”

“I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and thats to get rid of all my other desires”

“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.”

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

“The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasnt the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.”

“You dont have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that lifes about change.”

“The English contribution to world cuisine - the chip”

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

“The creative mind plays with the object it loves”

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

“born to be loved and to love who when not loving are not living”

Graham Chapman, co-author of the Parrot Sketch, is no more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. Hes kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky. And I guess that were all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before hed achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before hed had enough fun. Well, I feel that I should say: nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries. And the reason I feel I should say this is he would never forgive me if I didnt, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. (He paused, then claimed that Chapman had whipered in his ear while he was writing the speech):All right, Cleese. You say youre very proud of being the very first person ever to say shit on British television. If this service is really for me, just for starters, I want you to become the first person ever at a British memorial service to say fuck.

Its not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. Its the hope I cant stand. ~ Brian Stimpson, Clockwise

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

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

The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.

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.

This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.