Quotes By John Cleese

He who laughs most, learns best.

Well, the only way I can get a leading-man role is if I write it.

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.

A man will give up almost anything except his suffering.

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

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.

I can never do better than Fawlty Towers whatever I do. Now I very much want to teach young talent some rules of the game.

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

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.

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

In Britain, girls seem to be either bright or attractive. In America, that's not the case. They're both.

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.

Who's ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!

Sci-fi has never really been my bag. But I do believe in a lot of weird things these days, such as synchronicity. Quantum physics suggests it's possible, so why not?

I think it's because in America you always get the sense that if you fail, you can just pack up your things and go somewhere else and try again. But in England, it's so geographically small that if somebody succeeds here, it reduces your chances of succeeding.

I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother, who was supremely self-centred. She was hilariously self-centred. She did not really take interest in anything that didn't immediately affect her.

I was always a sports nut but I've lost interest now in whether one bunch of mercenaries in north London is going to beat another bunch of mercenaries from west London.

The most creative people have this childlike facility to play.

My compulsion to always be working has become less strong and my current business is purely down to this enormous alimony. If I wasn't doing this I'd be making documentaries about wildlife and other subjects that interest me.

The English contribution to world cuisine - the chip.

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.

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

The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.

The Americans all love 'The Holy Grail', and the English all love 'Life Of Brian', and I'm afraid on this one, I side with the English.

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.

I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.

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.

I think that sometimes you do something that makes a small group of people laugh, which is all we were trying to do; we were just trying to make each other laugh.

Most of the bad taste I've been accused of has been generic bad taste; it's been making fun of an idea as opposed to a person.

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