Quote

Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.

John Cleese

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Cleese
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: October 27
Actor
Autobiographer
Comedian
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Voice Actor
Writer
Weston-super-Mare
Somerset
John Marwood Cleese
Comedy
Best
Mean
Always
Spirited
Works

More quotes by John Cleese

Image
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.
John Cleese
Image
What's the bleedin' point?
John Cleese
Image
Come to me. I want to plow you like a Calgary driveway at Christmas.
John Cleese
Image
If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies... Do it in the 'closed' mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the 'open' mode... because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.
John Cleese
Image
Either people walk round dressed as chickens or they listen to Beethoven.
John Cleese
Image
If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?
John Cleese
Image
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.
John Cleese
Image
The most creative people have learned to tolerate the slight discomfort of indecision for much longer and so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.
John Cleese
Image
When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.
John Cleese
Image
You have to create boundaries of space and then you have to create boundaries of time.
John Cleese
Image
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
John Cleese
Image
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.
John Cleese
Image
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.
John Cleese
Image
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.
John Cleese
Image
Laughter is the best creative medicine.
John Cleese
Image
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.
John Cleese
Image
If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas
John Cleese
Image
Political correctness is a bit like a granny, a maiden aunt arriving at a party when everyone's having a good time. And she comes in, they all start sort of buttoning up and becoming self-conscious and behaving properly and then when she leaves, you can have fun again.
John Cleese
Image
I have a tendency sometimes to get too logical with what I'm writing, just because I want it to be kind of perfect.
John Cleese
Image
I'm very odd 'cause I think there's more than just a materialist planet, a materialist, reductionist planet.
John Cleese