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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

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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
Going
Forty
Much
Joke
Years
Specific
Really
Jokes
Guess
Comedy
Pretty
Even

More quotes by John Cleese

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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.
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Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to IQ, provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level.
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I was a terrible dancer. I dance like an Englishman.
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Come to me. I want to plow you like a Calgary driveway at Christmas.
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I get bored easily. I've been bored most of my life.
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Who's ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!
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It’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.
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Laughter is the best creative medicine.
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I think there are so many activities going on, like mountaineering. You know, you would pay good money not to have to do that, and yet there are people racing out who want to spend their spare time clambering up rocks.
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The World is insane. With tiny spots of sanity, here and there... Not the other way around!
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If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas
John Cleese
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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?
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The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.
John Cleese
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Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.
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The thrill I got discovering Buster Keaton when I was growing up was so exciting. He was one of the greats.
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When I was in school, I was beaten every 30 minutes. It never did me any harm except for some psychological mal-adjustments and blurred vision.
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If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?
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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.
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Now most people do not want an ordinary life in which they do a job well, earn the respect of their collaborators and competitors, bring up a family and have friends. That's not enough any more, and I think that is absolutely tragic - and I'm not exaggerating - that people feel like a decent, ordinary, fun life is no longer enough.
John Cleese
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I could take an umbrella and balance it on my chin or on my foot. And I just got interested in that kind of thing. And as I played games more and more and got stronger physically, I just became more coordinated.
John Cleese