Eric Idle Quotes

I believe in the separation of church and planet.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.

I love being an older comic now. It's like being an old soccer or an old baseball player. You're in the Hall of Fame and it's nice, but you're no longer that person in the limelight on the spot doing that thing.

A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate

Learn to trust yourself. That's very vital. ... Just stand with yourself. Remember, in his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only two paintings. I personally sold even fewer.

Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't make sense, and that it doesn't make much difference anyway.

Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.

Life took over 4 billion years to evolve into you, and you've about 70 more years to enjoy it. Don't just pursue happiness, catch it.

Never do things for money. It's always the things you do for love that turn out to pay the best.

Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not.

Bear in mind the simple rule, X squared to the power of two minus five over the seven point eight three times nineteen is approximately equal to the cube root of MCC squared divided by X minus a quarter of a third percent. Keep that in mind, and you can't go very far wrong.

I've got soggy thighs. It must be dinner time.

Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is "beware". This is not a wine for drinking; this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.

Many years ago I also bought a house in Provence for about 70,000 francs. It had no electricity or running water, and no road leading to the house, but gradually we made improvements. It's my escape and I love it.

Monty Python only became valuable when it was sold to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in America. They didn't pay much either, but the series has been shown repeatedly, which led to lucrative tapes, CDs and DVDs.

Even if you've written something for print, I think it's good to try [it] out on someone because it changes. You can think it's hilarious and they can tell you it's not.

No day of my life passes without someone saying the words 'Monty Python' to me. It's not bad.

John Cleese once told me he'd do anything for money. So I offered him a pound to shut up, and he took it.

I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority.

If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.

At least in America, you have freedom of speech, which is a good thing. It's just a question of whether you're allowed to use it on 'Fox News'.

Know what I mean? Eh, eh, Nudge nudge, Say no more?

The next step will be for the colonists on Mars to throw off the hand of the United States. There will be this wonderful historical irony. When the people on Mars write a declaration of independence saying, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...', the US will be rather pissed off.

Elvis saved my life when I was 13 or 14. He saved all our lives.

The Minister of Transport issued this appeal to motorists: Can anyone give him a lift to Leicester?

A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat!

I think you often learn from failure. Success just teaches you how great you were, but in fact it's knowing what will fail that will help you to make the right choices.

I always have a feeling you should move the playing field and the minute you know what you're doing, you're wrong. Therefore, I wanted us not to try to follow Spamalot immediately, but to do something different. This is perfect because it uses all the same skills, like story telling and lyric writing and music writing, but it's presenting it in a different form. And of course it gives me and John a nice chance to perform and show off which is also fun.

Well we were lucky because we started in Canada where everybody has a sense of humour! We flirted a little while with Josh Groban. He was personally interested in it. He said oh I'd love to do something different, and I said well it's pretty different! But in the end the dates didn't work out.

People can tell the truth much more freely when they're apparently lying.

I like the idea of being out there regularly with an audience and with a funny gang of people. That's what I grew up with - doing television, doing shows every week.

They're a typical Hollywood audience. All the kids are on drugs and all the adults are on roller skates.

I think the special thing about Python is that it's a writers' commune. The writers are in charge. The writers decide what the material is.

What's brown and sounds like a bell? DUNG!

I live in a Spanish-style hillside home in Los Angeles, California. I paid $900,000 in 1995. It's perhaps worth about $3m now. Thankfully, I paid off my mortgage before the crash because I could see it coming. I worried that I would be caught having to pay off a very high mortgage for a house I couldn't sell.

My father, who was a sergeant in the RAF during the Second World War, was killed in a hitchhiking accident while returning home on compassionate leave. As a result, my mother had to get work, as a nurse, and at seven the RAF put me into a boarding school and ex-orphanage called the Royal Wolverhampton School.

I like being a foreigner. For me, to live in California is very pleasant - I'm more comfortable not feeling a part of everything, not feeling responsible for the government or the roads or the health system.

The dreadful thing about getting older is you cry at the drop of a hat.

Talent is always more interesting - ambition is not interesting. If you have talent, you have to find ways of expressing it, but you may not be a success in the world's terms.

At Cambridge, you have to kiss the vice-chancellor's fingers. But I missed out on that, 'cause I was doing a matinee. I don't want to kiss a strange man's fingers anyway.

I used to think I was like the wicket- keeper, which is like the catcher in base- ball, y'know what I mean? You can call the play a lot from behind the plate, y'know what I mean? You're not necessarily the star, you're not the one that makes the mark, but usually in the end, you're called upon to get a run when it's needed.

Don't want to turn into mini-me.

Executives do not on the whole do well with comedy. They can't understand it, they can't read it, they can't spot it.

I pay taxes in three countries, but can't vote in any of them.

Subversion is what I do.

We destroy icons - that's what we do.

I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.

I will jump on anybody's private plane at the drop of a hat. I'm an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.

If the studios paid the artists, how would they ever be able to afford the executives?

You initially become funny as a kid because you're looking for attention and love. Psychologists think that's all to do with mother abandonment. I think John Cleese has his depressions, and Terry Gilliam's the same. All of us together make one completely insane person.