The three differences between American and British people:
- We speak English and you don't.
- When we hold a World Championship for a particular sport, we invite teams from other countries to play, as well.
- When you meet the head of state in Great Britain, you only have to go down on one knee.

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.

When I was a child and I was upset about something, my mother was not capable of containing that emotion, of letting me be upset but reassuring me, of just being with me in a calming way. She always got in a flap, so I not only had my own baby panics, fears and terrors to deal with, but I had to cope with hers, too. Eventually I taught myself to remain calm when I was panicked, in order not to upset her. In a way, she had managed to put me in charge of her. At 18 months old, I was doing the parenting.

At my age, I want to wake up and see sunshine pouring in through the windows every day. About his move from England to California.

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.

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.

If I had not gone into Monty Python, I probably would have stuck to my original plan to graduate and become a chartered accountant, perhaps a barrister lawyer, and gotten a nice house in the suburbs, with a nice wife and kids, and gotten a country club membership, and then I would have killed myself.

If I like chocolate it won't surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my fridge, but if you find out I've got 16 warehouses full of chocolate, you'd think I was insane. All these rich guys are insane, obsessive compulsive twits obsessed with money--money is all they think about--they're all nuts. Promoting Fierce Creatures, which Cleese says is a satire about Rupert Murdoch's greed.

When people say "I'm not a prude, but..." what they mean is "I am a prude, and..."

I don't think anyone should be educated sexually. There's far too many people on the planet. If we could hush it up for a few years, that would help.

It's lovely that Harry Potter and the Bond movies are still shot in England - that's a great pleasure, but it's true that most of the well-paid work is in America.

I think there's much more fear now than there used to be, much more fear of failure. 2001

And now for something completely different!

This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! If he wasn't nailed to this perch he'd be pushing up daiseys! This... is an ex-parrot!

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.

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel, and incompetent comes naturally to me.

Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.

Come to me. I want to plow you like a Calgary driveway at Christmas.

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.

My biggest regret? Not being knighted by the Queen. I should have been a knight, and I would have been knighted, if I hadn't written one horrible horrible Python sketch which I deeply deeply regret. Referring to Python's sketch: UPPER CLASS TWIT OF THE YEAR

Cleese: You see, you could never do a sketch like that these days. The audience is too uninformed. I blame the Americans. Nation of obese, violent, pig-ignorant, bible-thumping morons contaminating world culture. That’s why I spend most of my time here in France.... Beautiful, isn’t it? Just look at those olive trees. Interviewer: This is Santa Barbara.

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