"You know Seymour, there are some men who cannot stand too much perfection. They see it as a disease, which must be stamped out at its first rash showing."

"The sea is calm you said. Peaceful. Calm above, but below a world of gliding monsters preying on their fellows. Murderers, all of them. Only the strongest teeth survive. And who's to tell me it's any different here on board, or yonder on dry land."

"It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man."

"Flogging. The only solution to every problem. I warrant even the culprit himself doesn't know! It was just — his turn!"

"It's hot. And there's a lot of it. I like everything about it except the flavor."

"Good-bye to you too ol' Rights of Man!"

"2nd Soldier: Do you mean that, as a General, you're not the tiniest bit ambitious for our military future? General: I prefer our military past. The harm's done and there it is. As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords, we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it."

"I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. … It's the party at present in power."

"The only one who's always punctual is Death … whatever the time he always strikes his knell at the first streak of dawn … and believe me, he knows what he's doing. How I hate the dawn! It's the hour of the firing squad. The last glass of brandy. The ultimate cigarette. The final wish. All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses … fix your bayonets boys …gentlemen, synchronize your watches … in ten seconds time the barrage starts … a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years... And finally dawn is the herald of the day, our twelve hours of unimportance, when we have to cede to the pressures of the powers, smile at people we have every reason but expediency to detest … A diplomat these days is nothing but a head-waiter who's allowed to sit down occasionally."

"Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of."

"Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy."

"The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill."

"I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins."

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."

"Sex is a conversation carried out by other means."

"Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them."

"Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique."

"It is unfortunate for all that no moral issue has ever been clearer. Any attempt to plea-bargain with outlaws and renegades will only be at the expense of honor, decency and self-respect. The Serbs, are two-dimensional people with a craving for simplicity and an ideology so basic it can be understood without effort. They need enemies, not friends, to focus their two-dimensional ideas. Life for them is a simple tune, never an orchestration, or even a pleasant harmony. Animals make use of their resources with far greater felicity than these retorted creatures, whose subscription to the human race is well in arrears."

"There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners."

"The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us."

"Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."

"Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus."

"In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from."

"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious."

"I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer."

"By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door."

"To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness."

"If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue."

"Irrespective of nationality, soldiers are always open to the same discomfort and to the same comradeship the world over. I'll make things easy for you if you make things easy for me. That is, after all the unwritten law of the barracks."

"I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your — politeness."

"Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom."

"Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died."

"I want reparations from Italy,… and then the Normans came over in 1066 … they were horrible people from France, and they came and colonized us for 30 years — we need reparations there too, I’m afraid."

"[People] get competitive about this business of being oppressed,… We were oppressed, the English, by the Romans for 400 [years], from about 0 to 400."

"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."

"No puns, no puns, no puns."

"He who laughs most, learns best."

"I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy."

"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."

"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."

"If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?"

"History is a history of crime. It’s a history of people who were stronger beating up people who were weaker, and it’s always been that. It’s deeply, deeply distasteful. But to pretend that one lot were worse than another — you do know the British have been slaves twice, right?"

"All humans are stupid, but the smarter ones at least have a handle on their own ignorance."

"When I was teaching, the headmaster told me "You know, the sad thing about true stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it.""

"Aping Urbanity, Oozing with Vanity Plump as a Manatee, Faking Humanity Journalistic Calamity, Intellectual Inanity Fox News Insanity, You're a profanity Hannity"

"A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people."

"Because these people are operating at a very very low level of mental health, they are incapable of understanding the teaching."

"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."

"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 — [cue Python sketch: "Upper Class Twit of the Year"]"

"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.]"