Ricky Gervais Quotes

I never think of myself as a celebrity - or even an actor, actually. I think of myself as a writer-director. ~ Ricky Gervais

If all the Atheists & Agnostics left America, they'd lose 93% of The National Academy of Sciences & less than 1% of the prison population. ~ Ricky Gervais

I was okay with singing. I always sneak a song into everything I do. Dancing, a little awkward. Little embarrassed about that. I don't move well. But I was with a frog, so it doesn't matter. I'll do anything with a frog, that's my motto. He's great with tap-dancing or flap-dancing on my head. So no one's going to be looking at me when we're doing that dance. They're going to be saying, 'There's a frog dancing'. ~ Ricky Gervais

Opinions don't affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational ~ Ricky Gervais

I've never done anything for the common consensus. I do things to please me. If you are happy with something yourself, you become bulletproof. ~ Ricky Gervais

You should bring something into the world that wasn't in the world before. It doesn't matter what that is. It doesn't matter if it's a table or a film or gardening - everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, I did that. ~ Ricky Gervais

She said, 'I'm your biggest fan,' and I said, 'Who are you?' She said, 'Paris Hilton.' ~ Ricky Gervais

I've never been insulted by hateful satanists for not believing in their devil. Only by loving Christians for not believing in their God. ~ Ricky Gervais

Enjoy life. Have fun. Be kind. Have worth. Have friends. Be honest. Laugh. Die with dignity. Make the most of it. It's all we've got. ~ Ricky Gervais

It breaks your heart when you throw something away, but it's what left that counts. It's like worrying about the bits of rock you have knocked off in order to make a beautiful statue. You've wasted half the rock, yeah, but it's the Venus di Milo! ~ Ricky Gervais

Sometimes I'll be confident and go into a shop and say, "Hello, yeah, all right," and then the next day, if someone looks at me or talks to me, I just don't know what to do. If you're walking down the street with a baseball cap, you might be fine. But if you're in a pub and you see someone look at you, you think the worst thing in the world now is if they come over. It's a really weird feeling. ~ Ricky Gervais

In entertainment, I adore Ricky Gervais in 'Derek.' His performance is unbelievably charming, funny and poignant. In life, I adore my girlfriend. She is the most adorable person I have ever met - from her silly jokes to her cute teeth to her little drawings. ~ Josh Zuckerman

It's better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing and criticise others. Go create, have fun!! ~ Ricky Gervais

We want to see a struggle. We want to see people falling over but getting themselves back up on their feet, and that's what's extraordinary- ordinary people and their struggle. There's nothing as interesting as real life out your window. You walk down the street for half an hour, I'll give you half an hour of drama. ~ Ricky Gervais

A Christian telling an atheist they're going to hell is as scary as a child telling an adult they're not getting any presents from Santa. ~ Ricky Gervais

The terrible thing in England is if you interview a thousand people, five hundred of them will talk like they're going into a Guy Ritchie movie and the other five hundred will be Mr. Darcy. So we had to find cool, working class kids with no profile who could be John Travolta and James Dean and people like that. ~ Ricky Gervais

Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them. ~ Ricky Gervais

I think Hollywood's gotten more reactionary and conservative over the years, because there's no longer art in Hollywood. Art suffers in Hollywood. ~ Ricky Gervais

My ideal meal would probably be the cheesiest pasta or pizza, followed by something creamy and chocolaty. I mean, just the worst things, really. ~ Ricky Gervais

Dear Religion, This week I safely dropped a man from space while you shot a child in the head for wanting to go to school. Yours, Science. ~ Ricky Gervais

Being on the edge isn't as safe, but the view is better ~ Ricky Gervais

When I direct my own scripts, it's much easier as it's been in my head for a year already. What I love about this is having an idea and seeing it come to fruition onscreen. I would like to direct someone else's script one day, but I might not get round to it before I die - you can't legislate for being hit by a bus! ~ Ricky Gervais

I'm quite squeamish, really. I'm philistine and unsophisticated - not because of my great discerning palate but other reasons. Some are moral grounds, some texture. ~ Ricky Gervais

I've always dabbled. I've always nearly written a book, I've always tried painting, I've always tried to make something out of ideas, really. It was never a plan. I never thought, Right. First I'll get famous, and then I'll do a book. ~ Ricky Gervais

Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn't know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn't get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn't hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. ~ Ricky Gervais

It's going to be a night of partying and heavy drinking. Or as Charlie Sheen calls it: Breakfast. ~ Ricky Gervais

No one wants to see cool people doing brilliantly. I want to see the struggle. That's the fun bit. ~ Ricky Gervais

If you can't joke about the most horrendous things in the world, what's the point of jokes? What's the point in having humor? Humor is to get us over terrible things. ~ Ricky Gervais

I feel sorry for people in power. I feel sorry for the Queen, in a way, that she hasn't had a normal life. It'd difficult for me to hate anyone. Immediately someone's unpopular, I feel sorry for them. ~ Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais is a genius. ~ Oscar Nunez

Pol Pot - he rounded up anybody he thought was intellectual and had them executed. And how he told someone was intellectual or not was whether they wore glasses. If they're that clever, take them off when they see him coming! ~ Ricky Gervais

Blasphemy: a law to protect an all-powerful, supernatural deity from getting its feelings hurt. ~ Ricky Gervais

Fact is stranger than fiction. You see people walking down the street that would never be allowed on television. You have to tone it down. ~ Ricky Gervais

If you try to please everyone you'll please no one. ~ Ricky Gervais

Next time someone tells me they believe in God, I'll say 'Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra? ... ' If they say 'Just God. I only believe in the one God,' I'll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don't believe in 2,870 gods, and they don't believe in 2,869. ~ Ricky Gervais

I feel that a lot of British comedy is often too bombastic, too obvious, dressing up and shouting and pulling funny faces. ~ Ricky Gervais

The world is bigger than all the parts. That's the important thing, and one thing can throw everything off kilter. And you must never let yourself off. You'll let yourself off by mistake. So you shouldn't do it consciously. You have to be above it all and just be very disciplined with it. Just be very disciplined with it. ~ Ricky Gervais

I love British voicing and British humour in general. I'm a huge Ricky Gervais fan. ~ McG

I went to university with no money. I can't understand a society that wouldn't give a poor person the same opportunity as a rich person. ~ Ricky Gervais

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if you believe in god, you're wrong. ~ Ricky Gervais

It's interesting that music in this country ... we sort of sold something to America with The Beatles and they sold something back. And we've never been afraid to embrace American style rock 'n' roll and make it our own over here. ~ Ricky Gervais

Just looking at all the faces here reminds me of some of the great work that was done this year ... by cosmetic surgeons. ~ Ricky Gervais

If I do eat meat, it's got to be ethical. I want to know that it lived a great life before it was killed humanely. ~ Ricky Gervais

You could easily spot any Religion of Peace. Its extremist members would be extremely peaceful. ~ Ricky Gervais

It will be great to play a short, fat sweaty loser for a change. ~ Ricky Gervais

I had great memories of growing up in a working class estate. I remember it being sunny all the time. So we're putting that on screen. It's not people wallowing in degradation. ~ Ricky Gervais

It's a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It's the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for. ~ Ricky Gervais

It's not terrible, I guess, but if Ricky Gervais was half as talented as me, maybe the show would actually be funny once in a while. ~ Zach Braff

Your God is the best God. In fact, he's the only God. All other Gods are ridiculous, made up rubbish. Not yours though. Yours is real. ~ Ricky Gervais

I'm a failed pop star. I always sneak a song into everything I do. ~ Ricky Gervais

When you think of things like The Sopranos, The Wire, Damages, they are beating film on a regular basis. Most films are terrible. It's only the 2% that are good. There's things you can do on TV which you can't do on film. There is something about those episodic, serialisations that are grand and operatic. ~ Ricky Gervais

Remember, being healthy is basically dying as slowly as possible. ~ Ricky Gervais

It annoys me that the burden of proof is on us. It should be "You came up with the idea. Why do you believe it?" I could tell you I've got superpowers. But I can't go up to people saying "Prove I can't fly." They'd go: "What do you mean 'Prove you can't fly'? Prove you can!" ~ Ricky Gervais

Growing up, the two things that made my blood boil were religious intolerance and animal cruelty. I've never understood it. I can't stand to have an animal in pain. ~ Ricky Gervais

People confuse the subject of the joke with the target of the joke, and they're very rarely the same. ~ Ricky Gervais

I like big escapist films. It's odd because the type of comedian I am and the things I do when I'm writing and directing myself usually deal with the darker side of the human psyche and excruciating social faux pas. I often deal in taboos and the subjects I do as a stand-up are quite challenging. But my film roles have been much more fun and escapist. ~ Ricky Gervais

[As a kid] I did enjoy making people laugh but I was also attracted to funny people. I'm [still] quite happy to not be the one trying to make other people laugh. I'm happy laughing at someone else. I enjoy laughing and I'll happily be the one just laughing all night if you can make me laugh. ~ Ricky Gervais

I don't do anything for the money. ~ Ricky Gervais

I'm a pretty big Ricky Gervais fan. ~ Craig Roberts

Of all the disciplines involved in making anything - TV, film or anything I do - the writing is the most valuable commodity. ~ Ricky Gervais

If you walked around like David Bowie in 1973 in Reading, you'd get beaten up. The 1970s in a small town was more like the 1950s.. and that's the truth. The backdrop was probably Victorian. ~ Ricky Gervais

I like 'The Office.' I particularly like the British version with Ricky Gervais. Of course, I liked the 'Seinfeld' show a lot. I thought that was an awfully good show. ~ Dick Van Dyke

Comedy scares me a lot. I feel like it's way harder than drama. I think my safety net is definitely drama, and I would love to kind of be able to be able to push into the comedy world and do something kind of like a Christopher Guest kind of style show. That, to me, is my kind of comedy. Like, Ricky Gervais comedy. That's my kind of thing. ~ Tatiana Maslany

The service in L.A. is the best. You don't get sarcastic, surly, fed-up waiters and waitresses like you do in England. They're good at their job and they're there for the customer. The only depressing thing is a lot of them have written more screenplays than me. ~ Ricky Gervais

What will it feel like after you die? Exactly the same as it felt for those billions of years before you were born. ~ Ricky Gervais

I see myself much more as a writer/director or at least an aspiring writer/director - not necessarily in film. ~ Ricky Gervais

I've never regretted saying no to anything, or finishing something. When I'm in the middle of doing something I love, I can have a better idea, and I'll go, "Oh God, I can't finish this." Maybe I've got some sort of disorder. ~ Ricky Gervais

Being honest is what counts. To make the ordinary extraordinary is so much better than starting with the extraordinary. ~ Ricky Gervais

You can't censor stupidity. ~ Ricky Gervais

If I had a gun with two bullets and I was in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Toby, I would shoot Toby twice. ~ Ricky Gervais

Knowing that Ricky Gervais will never work again means a lot to me. I'm going to make sure of it. ~ Harvey Weinstein

I think the best advice I'd say to any actor when you do comedy is play it straight. ~ Ricky Gervais

Our challenge with "The Office" and "Extras" was to get it completely scripted but to find a cast that could make it look like they were saying it for the first time. ~ Ricky Gervais

Same sex marriage isn't gay privilege, it's equal rights. Privilege would be something like gay people not paying taxes. Like churches don't. ~ Ricky Gervais

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ... Then he said, "Let there be light." Which means he made the entire universe in the dark! How fucking good is that? He's brilliant. ~ Ricky Gervais

Americans are brought up to believe they can grow up to be the president of the United States. Brits are told, It won't happen to you. ~ Ricky Gervais

And there's a period where everyone's buying those and it's really bad because no one is Larry David or Ricky Gervais. And then they don't work and networks stop wanting to buy them, but because they wanted to buy them before the producer wanted to make them, the producers are still hanging on to wanting to make them. ~ B. J. Porter

Life is an amazing gift, but it's only a gift if you're able to enjoy it. ~ Ricky Gervais

I've probably done the odd thing. I've probably done more than I would have done and some things you don't say no to. You don't say no to working with "The Simpsons" ... the greatest comedy show on television. You mustn't. Even though going to my bad judgment, I remember saying that all I can do is make this show slightly worse. ~ Ricky Gervais

The only reason I work out is so I can eat more cheese, ~ Ricky Gervais

I don't see myself as part of an acting fraternity or a comedy fraternity. ~ Ricky Gervais

Telling someone with depression to pull themselves together is about as useful as telling someone with cancer to just stop having cancer ~ Ricky Gervais

I've got the attention span of a child. ~ Ricky Gervais

You can drive 1,000 miles across America and find yourself, whereas if you drive a few miles from Slough you're in London anyway, or you hit Wales and you're in another country! Also, wherever you are in England it's still raining. ~ Ricky Gervais

To complain about critics in a business is like a sailor complaining about the waves. Go back to the beach if you don't like it. ~ Ricky Gervais

You want to see the people you've sort of come to know and love, or love to hate, you want to see them develop in some way. And I hope people get sort of caught up in that arc. ~ Ricky Gervais

We only do what we think is good and what we're happy with. I do that in stand-up, I even do it with my children's books. I don't do market research, I don't have focus groups, I don't care. I don't care if it fails, honestly. I'd rather have something that's completely mine fail than something succeed that I'm not proud of. ~ Ricky Gervais

I remember the first check I got for 'The Office,' and it made me feel sad. It ruined it ... Because there was sort of a nobility in poverty. ~ Ricky Gervais

Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on the computer. ~ Ricky Gervais

Honor is a gift a man gives himself. You can be as good as anyone that ever lived. If you can read, you can learn everything that anyone ever learned. But you've got to want it. ~ Ricky Gervais

That's the amazing thing about life. You can just rub it out, like a blackboard, and start again. ~ Ricky Gervais

Whatever else is happening, things are better in the sun. ~ Ricky Gervais

I like every part [of the film process ] except the business and admin stuff. The initial idea. Writing. Re-writing. Casting. Directing, Editing. If I had to chose I'd say writing, followed by putting music on the picture. That is magical. ~ Ricky Gervais

I love how people walk around with crucifixes, skullcaps, pointy hats, funny beards and then say 'you should keep your atheism to yourself.' ~ Ricky Gervais

Never confuse your right to say what you believe with a right to never be disagreed with and ridiculed for saying what you believe. ~ Ricky Gervais

I'm a militant fundamentalist atheist. I'm going to get on a crowded train, unbutton my coat and say rational things. People will be hurt. ~ Ricky Gervais

Animals are not here for us to do as we please with. We are not their superiors, we are their equals. We are their family. Be kind to them. ~ Ricky Gervais

I have to be excited, I have to have an adrenaline rush about doing something, or it bores me, I feel trapped. ~ Ricky Gervais

I fought a bear once. But it started crying, so I let it off. ~ Ricky Gervais

Mondays are fine. It's your life that sucks. ~ Ricky Gervais