A collection of quotes and thoughts by Michael Palin on travel, music, love, art, funny, comedy, humor, argument, religion, belief, family, equality, poverty and writing.
64 Great Quotes By Michael Palin That Will Make You Laugh
Michael Edward Palin is a popular English actor, television presenter, writer and comedian. He had been a part of ‘Monty Python’, the renowned comedy group and is widely regarded as one of the best comedians in the modern era. Palin started off his career in mid 1960s. Before ‘Monty Python’, Palin had been a part of shows like ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’, ‘Ken Dodd Show’ and ‘The Frost Report’. However, it was with the comedy group ‘Monty Python’ that Palin gained recognition. Thereafter, they performed on BBC, theatres and films. Some of the most well-known performances of Palin for the group include ‘The Fish Slapping Dance’, ‘Argument Clinic’, ‘Dead Parrot Sketch’, ‘Bicycle Repairman’ and ‘The Lumberjack Song’ among others. Other than that, Palin has also been a highly influential actor, travel writer and a travel documentary maker during his distinguished career. He has won the ‘BAFTA Award’ for best actor in a supporting role for the film ‘A Fish Called Wanda’. He remains to be one of the most respected actors in Britain. Here, we have compiled the most memorable thoughts and quotations by the distinguished actor and comedian. Read through the quotes and thoughts by Michael Palin that will make your day.
I don't see why it should be remarkable that you can acquire a reputation for fairness and decency. Those are qualities shared by so many people. And the great majority of people I meet are decent people, just trying to navigate their way through the world without causing too much trouble.
I do have high standards. I look at everything I have done and think, 'Why wasn't that better?' Part of my motivation is from crippling self-doubt - I have got to prove myself wrong.
'The Truth' is not meant to preach or point any fingers. It's meant to show that perhaps we should all avoid taking the moral high ground unless we have thought about things a bit more.
Michael Palin
Despite having seen a fair amount of the world, I still love travelling - I just have an insatiable curiosity and like looking out of a window.
I wanted to be an explorer, but gradually found the world had been explored and that there was nowhere left, really. Once they climbed Everest in 1953, when I was 10 years old, I thought, 'Well, that's pretty much it now.' But the idea of travelling and exploring and adventure was very strong.
I've always been blessed, or cursed, some might say, with an insatiable curiosity, a desire to find something out about a people and a place. That's where it all begins.
Michael Palin
Fame changes everything. When you're well-known, you're expected to be different. Some people assume you must have a yacht and four homes. Or that you're famous because you are 'A Decent Man'.
There are people who travel because they want to push themselves to physical limits, people who walk across deserts or cycle across the Antarctic - like Ranulph Fiennes, who just does it because it's there. And then there are people like me, who are just genuinely curious about the world.
If you had a successful TV show, people wanted to see you live. Promoters had had practice with pop groups, and 'Python' achieved a similar status. We also had lots of rock star fans - George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant. Promoters saw that and liked it.
I think you learn a lot about a country from its art. To me, it's part of the drama of life. It teaches you that there are places, moments and incidents in other cultures that genuinely have a life of their own.
I don't seek discomfort. But, very often, you realise that what you fear is actually quite ephemeral; something's different, something's unfamiliar; therefore, it must be worse.
When I'm travelling, I always take my little notebook and scribble things down as I watch them; I'm very much geared to everything that's happening. Whereas, the diary I keep is just about a record of a day I've spent. When I'm filming, I'm looking quite intensely at everything I see and trying to get my own eye on what we're going through.
I was very bad at projecting my voice. I used to do this Gumby Flower Arranging sketch which involved shouting, and I could never do it right, and at one point my voice went completely.
People look for patterns in everything. It's what keeps us sane, I suppose. I struggle to see any patterns in my life. I think I can understand depression a bit because of my sister. My own feelings of... I'm aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That's just the way life is.
I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.
I've never had a particular skill. I can't cook, dance, play an instrument, speak a foreign language. This used to worry me. I'd think, when I'm grown up, at 18, then I made it 21, it will be clear what role I should have in life. It never happened. I never signed on the dotted line as the sort of adult my father wanted.
I'm not your expert on Africa or animals or whatever. I'm not a travel writer or maker of documentaries. I was someone who doesn't know very much, trying to communicate.
I love reading other people's diaries, especially someone like Virginia Woolf's - such a formidable woman that it's a revelation when she shows you a more vulnerable side of herself.
There is nothing better than playing a scene with John Cleese or Maggie Smith. It's electric. But I don't think I'm the sort of person who needs to have an outer ego in order to produce something. I realised that through the travel programmes.
Hollywood was possible for a while! Why didn't I go along with it? Well, the other things that were pulling me back were more important. Being at home, being in the same marriage, these things enabled me to go off and travel in the first place.
People say the most stupid things on the spur of the moment that they then have to retract.
Michael Palin
I'm not good at confrontation. I know my strengths. I like company. And I am not a great arguer... I do find it much easier talking to people I like about things we both like.
So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me.
Something about John Cleese was always very unsettled, I felt. There was always something else he wanted to do. He seemed constantly driven by this sense that there was a nirvana somewhere; some unique place where mind, body and soul would be utterly satisfied.
When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'
I've been lucky enough to stand on both poles, but the place that seemed the remotest to me was Butugychag, a former gulag in Siberia. It is completely cut off from the rest of the world.
I've been lucky to have made a number of travel programmes with the BBC, the object being to see places off the beaten track. As a result, I've often had a guide who's been able to show me things that you wouldn't see with a tour group.
Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
You don't ask people about the immigration policies of the U.K. or their country's agricultural policy. Instead, you talk to them about the meal they're eating or their family, and from that you get the sense of another human being, someone we can all relate to.
Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.
Michael Palin
Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.
I enjoy writing, I enjoy my house, my family and, more than anything I enjoy the feeling of seeing each day used to the full to actually produce something. The end.
