Eric Idle Quotes

So, what have I learned over my long and weird life?
Well, first, that there are two kinds of people, and I don't much care for either of them. Second, when faced with a difficult choice, either way is often best. Third, always leave a party when people begin to play the bongos. ~ Eric Idle

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

I do pool exercises, like weightlifting but underwater. I walk, I swim ... I'm pretty fit for an old bloke. ~ Eric Idle

Always look on the brighter side of life ~ Eric Idle

To me, the musical is best when it's a musical comedy. So if you have a very, very funny show, and very good, funny songs, that's what the musical does best. ~ Eric Idle

Typical Hollywood crowd - all the kids are on drugs, and all the adults are on roller skates. ~ Eric Idle

It's such fun to take a lot of people and create something silly. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

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

Nobody gets irony anymore, as we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George Bush gets a library, our irony is dead. ~ Eric Idle

When, in 1966, I progressed to The Frost Report, I was paid ten guineas a minute. I was guaranteed three minutes a week, so this was good money. ~ Eric Idle

Probably spending 12 years at boarding school - comedy became a survival gene. But I think some people are funny right off the bat, as soon as they can speak or be naughty. ~ Eric Idle

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'. ~ Eric Idle

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

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. ~ Eric Idle

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

People who are interested in money are really uninteresting people. They look like Donald Trump. ~ Eric Idle

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

I love stage work. The thing about plays is that they're perfectible. With film, you shoot that take and maybe another. During 'Spamalot,' I rewrote Act II three times. ~ Eric Idle

I'm more surprised than anyone that 'Spamalot's done so well. You can never predict what's going to be a hit. ~ Eric Idle

We've discovered that the less we do, the more money we make. ~ Eric Idle

Mere lack of evidence, of course, is no reason to denounce a theory. Look at intelligent design. The fact that it is bollocks hasn't stopped a good many people from believing in it. Darwinism itself is only supported by tons of evidence, which is a clear indication that Darwin didn't write his books himself. ~ Eric Idle

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

I don't invest in the stock market, but I have pension funds - some in America and the UK. ~ Eric Idle

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. 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. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

I was thrilled to win a Tony in 2005 for 'Spamalot'. ~ Eric Idle

I never pay any attention to figures. ~ Eric Idle

Reading Alan Zweibel makes me laugh out loud. And yet it is not a particularly funny name. ~ Eric Idle

We learnt a lot because we got in with real choreographers who tell you what they need from a song, because a song has to advance the story. Then real directors like Mike Nichols tell you where you can have 'B themes' and 'C themes', and we go oh yes, B themes and C themes! So we were taught in the finest school amongst the finest people. And also by the school of experience. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

I bring messages and thanks from the others. Terry Gilliam sadly can't be with us tonight as they won't let him show his ass, which has been very favorably compared with Spielberg's ass.
Graham Chapman can't be with us tonight, as sadly he is still dead. And John Cleese is finishing a movie.
He has to get it back to Blockbuster by tomorrow. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

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

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

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. ~ Eric Idle

The room was rococo. I had a strong sense of gilt. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

I've always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones. ~ Eric Idle

You could feel the place going crazy because we hadn't been on stage together for maybe 35 years and the audience could just feel us in the darkness come on and they went nuts. It made the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck and we sang Sit on My Face, which I thought was wonderfully appropriate for George's memorial, and then we bowed and we showed our bare asses. ~ Eric Idle

It just seems to me that there's no particular reason comedy albums should be dead. There's a lot to laugh at. We have very funny people, still. ~ Eric Idle

You could write a joke in the pub at lunchtime and watch it performed on television that evening. ~ Eric Idle

Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand. ~ Eric Idle

Laughter is the only sane response to pathological lying. ~ Eric Idle

My education was paid for by the RAF Benevolent Fund, so a charity school, run like an orphanage, with uniforms and beatings. It was tough, but it got me to Cambridge - like being a chrysalis suddenly becoming a butterfly. ~ Eric Idle

If this isn't exactly what went down, it's certainly how it should have happened. ~ Eric Idle

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

When I was 23 I started writing for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and was paid three guineas for every minute's airtime. ~ Eric Idle

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

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. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

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. ~ Eric Idle

Fuck you very much, the FCC.
Fuck you very much for fining me.
Five thousand bucks a fuck,
So I'm really out of luck.
That's more than Heidi Fleiss was charging me. ~ Eric Idle

Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it, life's a laugh and deat's a joke, it's true: You'll se it's all a show, keep'em laughing as you go, just remember that the last laugh is on YOU ... and ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE ~ Eric Idle

I won't read scripts because I have a limited amount of time. Why should I help other people do lame stuff when I can just go out and put on lame stuff of my own? ~ Eric Idle

So it became in my mind a nine-carol service; an oratorio and orchestral concert all in one, but with narration. That's something I've learned about, because it's the story that keeps you in there. I wrote a libretto and I gave it to John [Du Prez, Idle's co-writer of many years]. We normally don't work in this fashion but I said off you go, and he went off for about three months. He brought me back this demo which blew my mind. ~ Eric Idle

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

I love my family, my wife, my kids, my dogs, my home, my life. I am a very happy and contented man. ~ Eric Idle

I used to have a house in London, but couldn't face 20 more years of St John's Wood in the rain. ~ Eric Idle

A website can be very time-intensive, but I'd love to have one where people can contribute to it - like invent islands and make their own flags, and their own laws. I think that'd be kind of fun. ~ Eric Idle

Let anyone using those weasel words "freedom of worship" know, they have "freedom of worship" in China and it is meaningless and it is vile. "Freedom of worship" says you may do what you like in that building on Sunday mornings or whenever you like, but when you come out you will bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state. That is the antithesis of what the Founders meant in guaranteeing "freedom of religion. ~ Eric Metaxas

I don't want to be famous. I want to be secure. I don't want the world. I just want a piece of it. I want people to remember Eric Davis. ~ Eric Davis

Some places are like family. They annoy us to no end, especially during the holidays, but we keep coming back for more because we know, deep in our hearts, that our destinies are intertwined. ~ Eric Weiner

The past will always be there but that doesn't mean you have to be. ~ Eric Shoars

I really liked it best when I was a nobody. ~ Eric Heiden

Graduation speeches force you to reflect. They are about consciousness. Nothing is better than consciousness. ~ Bruce Eric Kaplan

That which is unique and worthwhile in us makes itself felt only in flashes. If we do not know how to catch and savor the flashes we are without growth and exhilaration. ~ Eric Hoffer

I'm not asking for your forgiveness. I have done no wrong according to my kind. I never meant to turn you. I just wanted to have a little fun with you before they took you away. ~ Melika Dannese Lux

You cannot cheat success! Gotta work for it! You gotta breathe it! Sleep it! Eat it! ~ Eric Thomas

There's only one Mark McGwire. The man walked over 160 times. Just think. If he walks 60 times, he might hit 100 homers. ~ Eric Davis

Religion is like a knife. If you use it the wrong way you can cut yourself. ~ Eric Weiner

The less human you feel, the more human you become. ~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and though them, all the rest. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

Then he looked at her.
That connection again. It seemed to be drawing them together-an almost physical feeling of attraction. It was exciting, but scary.
Eric got up very slowly and crossed the room. He sat by Thea. Neither of them looked away.
And then things just seemed to happen by themselves. Their fingers were intertwined. Thea was looking up and he was looking down. They were so close that their breath mingled. Thea shivered with the electricity.
Everything seemed wrapped in a golden haze. ~ L.J.Smith

When the idle poor become the idle rich, you'll never know just who is who, or which is which. ~ E.Y. Harburg

In short, a diamond bracelet is a much more honest instrument of courtship than a perforated stomach. She has the option of throwing the jewelry back at him, but she cannot decently walk out on the ulcer. ("Look How Hard I've Been Trying") ~ Eric Berne

On the surface, ojalá translates to "hopefully" in English. But that's just on paper, merely the dictionary definition. The reality is that there are some words that defy translation; their meaning contains a whole host of things simmering beneath the surface. There's beauty contained in the word, more than the flippancy of an idle hope. It speaks to the tenor of life, the low points and the high, the sheer unpredictability of it all. And at the heart of it, the word takes everything and puts it into the hands of a higher power, acknowledging the limits of those here on earth, and the hope, the sheer hope, the kind you hitch your life to, that your deepest wish, your deepest yearning will eventually be yours. ~ Chanel Cleeton

Fast food is both evil and genius. Because of it we can feed a large number of people fairly decently at an affordable price. However, all the artificial flavors and artificial ingredients in some of their products are unacceptable. And it's designed so you can eat fast so you get back to work more quickly. Not good. ~ Eric Ripert

Although it has been said that idle hands are the devil's workshop, when it comes to teenagers, both idle and active hands are the devil's workshop. ~ Amy Sedaris

The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Oh wouldn't that twist your twat if that turned out to be true! ~ Eric Arvin

I get inhabited by a character and then you mourn it. There's a period of mourning for me, definitely. ~ Eric Bana

consensus is not about getting everyone to agree. Instead, it's about coming to the best idea for the company and rallying around it. ~ Eric Schmidt

I'm not really into alternative country - I'm into Patsy Cline, who lived down the street from where I lived, and old Dolly Parton records, Kitty Wells and that old stuff. I like country music. I also like Eric Church, who has a great new sound but also holds onto that old sound. ~ Valerie June

To be human is to be beautifully flawed ~ Eric Wilson

I was seeking within myself the human being I had so long lost sight of, hoping that my passion had only been distorted but had never been completely suppressed, by the social illusion, by the dominant ideal of "concealing emotions". I wished to shout: "I broke away from your cold and petrified world in which I was one of the wheels running noiselessly in the great machine, one of the idle wheels. I have plunged into an unknown abyss; and in this one hour of the plunge I have lived more fully than in all sheltered years in your circle. I do not belong to you anymore, I may be on the heights or in the depths, but never shall I return to the dead levels of your philistine comfort. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There are some songs that don't belong to The Animals that I refuse to give in to and not do. I enjoy singing other people's songs, you know. That's why they're written in the first place. ~ Eric Burdon

This is quite characteristic of most of the churches I saw. So what stands in place of the Christian message? An ethical and social idealism borne by a faith in progress that - who knows how - claims the right to call itself "Christian." And in the place of the church as the congregation of believers in Christ there stands the church as a social corporation. Anyone ~ Eric Metaxas

The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities. ~ Eric Hoffer

One quintessential moment in time is when you're 22, when you graduate college. And then another quintessential time is as a middle-age man. That's the convergence. ~ Bruce Eric Kaplan

There's a great book about John Kennedy and his relationship to civil rights called 'The Bystander.' The title alone suggests that he did as little as possible, any minimal critical effort, to really facilitate civil rights in the White House. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

It is freely admitted that this "testing" is far from ideal and could even be described as anecdotal. ~ Eric Gill

Ambition is vital, but dangerous: it is a keen motive and a driving force, but over what edge can it drive the artist? ~ Eric Maisel

I read it: "A man earned daily for 5 days and 3 times as much as he paid for his board, after which he was obliged to be idle 4 days," it said. "Upon counting his money after paying for his board he found that he had 2 ten-doller bills and 4 dollers. How much did he pay for the board, and what were his wages?"
"All right. Think now," Weaver said. "How would you begin to solve it? What's your X?"
I thought. Very hard. For quite some time. About the man and his meager wages and shabby boardinghouse and lonely life. "Where did he work?" I finally asked.
"What? It doesn't matter, Matt. Just assign an X to-"
"A mill, I bet," I said, picturing the man's threadbare clothing, his worn shoes. "A woolen mill. Why do you think he was obliged to be idle?"
"I don't know why. Look, just-"
"I bet he got sick," I said, clutching Weaver's arm. "Or maybe business wasn't good, and his boss had no work for him. I wonder if he had a family in the country. It would be a terrible thing, wouldn't it, if he had children to feed and no work? Maybe his wife was poorly, too. And I bet he had..."
"Damn it, Mattie, this is algebra, not composition!" Weaver said, glaring at me.
"Sorry," I said, feeling like a hopeless case. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

There's always something that an engineer can do to make microscopes better. ~ Eric Betzig

As Sun cofounder Bill Joy noted, no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else. ~ Eric Schmidt

Kids aint supposed to be grateful! They're supposed to eat your food, break your heart. ~ Eric Kripke

I sort of look at music as helping me get through situations. ~ Eric Stonestreet