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John Cleese Quotes

born 1939 England

John Marwood Cleese (born 27 October 1939) is an English comedian and actor best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for co-writing the TV series Fawlty Towers in which he played Basil Fawlty.

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Random John Cleese quote

20 quotes

All humans are stupid, but the smarter ones at least have a handle on their own ignorance.

Because these people are operating at a very very low level of mental health, they are incapable of understanding the teaching.

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

Best New Games (2002)

Four hundred years ago, we would have been burnt for this film. Now, I'm suggesting that we've made an advance.

He who laughs most, learns best.

Creating Emotionally Safe Schools: A Guide for Educators and Parents‎ (2001)

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

On Fresh Air with Terry Gross (1997)

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

When you get to my age … you realize that the the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.

When I was teaching, the headmaster told me "You know, the sad thing about true stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it."

If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?

When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.

I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.

You can do the creation and then criticize it, but you can't do them at the same time. So if you're worried about offending people and constantly thinking of that, you are not going to be very creative. So I think it has a disastrous effect.

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.

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 a particular point that I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge it as true.

History is a history of crime. It’s a history of people who were stronger beating up people who were weaker, and it’s always been that. It’s deeply, deeply distasteful. But to pretend that one lot were worse than another — you do know the British have been slaves twice, right?

[People] get competitive about this business of being oppressed,… We were oppressed, the English, by the Romans for 400 [years], from about 0 to 400.

I want reparations from Italy,… and then the Normans came over in 1066 … they were horrible people from France, and they came and colonized us for 30 years — we need reparations there too, I’m afraid.

No puns, no puns, no puns.

"Ode To Sean Hannity", sent by Cleese to Keith Olbermann, and read publicly on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (8 August 2009)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Cleese (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.