Quote

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

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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
Return
Alternative
Open
Considering
Ravine
Creative
Closed
Takeoff
Moment
Alternatives
Timeliness
Action
Strategy
Leaping
Moments
Aware
Strategies
Trying
Intelligent
Receptive
Time
Therefore
Mode

More quotes by John Cleese

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Although I had good hand-eye coordination, I was so tall and skinny and muscularly weak that I just was not well coordinated. But what I started to do quite early on was watch some of the great old silent comedians, like Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin, and then later on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.
John Cleese
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I think we're all born with a sense of humor. Creativity is another thing though.
John Cleese
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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
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I get bored easily. I've been bored most of my life.
John Cleese
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You have to create boundaries of space and then you have to create boundaries of time.
John Cleese
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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
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I think you can write very good comedy without a partner, but what I love about it, working with a partner, is that you get to places you'd never get on your own. It's like when God was designing the world and decided we couldn't have children without a partner it was a way of mixing up the genes so you'd get a more interesting product.
John Cleese
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I would like to do my own eulogy, and then shoot myself and then get in the coffin.
John Cleese
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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
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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 wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.
John Cleese
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As Daniel Levitin writes, our brain is a giant pattern detector. If we read something that coincides with what we already believe we're more likely to give it credence, while the opposite is not true.
John Cleese
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Aping urbanity, Oozing with vanity, Plump as a manatee, Faking humanity, Intellectual inanity, Journalistic calamity, Fox Noise insanity, You're a profanity, Hannity.
John Cleese
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I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
John Cleese
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If you really don't know where to start or if you're stuck, start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting.
John Cleese
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I wish you wusses would stop whining about your unhappiness. I'm really fed up with it. Pour yourself a scotch and pull yourself together. Go out and shoot something!
John Cleese
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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.
John Cleese
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By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.
John Cleese
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It’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.
John Cleese
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Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.
John Cleese
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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.
John Cleese