Michael Palin Quotations

I am restless. I don't mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village.

Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won't be made safer by creating barriers between people.

I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller.

The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience.

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.

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 always wanted to be an explorer, but - it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person.

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.

One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle.

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.

I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.

'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.

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.

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 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.

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 want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy.

Travelling, and being paid for it, is just great.

There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe.

The human race should just slow down and think about what it is doing.

I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.

I can be me, and people seem quite happy with that.

'Nice' means nothing. Is it someone who doesn't swear and shout? I swear and shout. 'Nice' sounds ineffectual.

People are still crazy about Python after twenty-five years, which I find hard to believe.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

I got my first lifetime achievement award years ago, and I was very excited, but then I got a sense of: Well, can one get a second lifetime award?

I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.

I've never particularly liked travelling with large groups or being told where to go by somebody else. I prefer to find out for myself.

I would love to go to Iran. The island of Madagascar, everyone says is pretty exotic, or the wonderful Namibian desert.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 have been unusually blessed in that I've been allowed to pursue two strands of a career that both delight me and seem to please the public.

I'd got over playing a character. People accepted who I was, and if I was incompetent and useless, they felt quite endeared to me.

People say the most stupid things on the spur of the moment that they then have to retract.

Please don't ask which I enjoy more - acting or hosting - because I love them equally.

The kids growing up is a separate strand to your life. However bad a day you've had, that's the most important thing, and you have to remember that.

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.

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.

We were amazed at the enthusiasm of American audiences.

Of course there is a huge in our material welfare, religious upbringing, and things like that. But things like your family, your house, your children's education, your hope for the future, are things that throughout the Muslim world they would share very easily with their counterparts in America.

The American dimension to Python happened quite late. People said they weren't interested, and we'd practically given up hope.

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.

a straightforward, down-to-earth man who had this extraordinary ability to make the nation laugh - probably more often than anyone else I know.

Ronnie was a straightforward man who had this extraordinary ability to make the nation laugh.

Ronnie could turn himself into any character. He did it with an effortless ease.

Always look on the bright side of life. (Monty Python)

Do Not Adjust Your Set ... Monty Python's Flying Circus.

There was a mixture there and it was a rather pleasant mixture, and I think it helped him a lot in the last few years, that he had his spirituality, ... Death held no terrors for George whatsoever, and he still got a lot out of life and found the humor was there right up to when the last time I saw him, which was in August.

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.

I can't think of anyone who knew how to play comedy better than Ronnie Barker and I count myself enormously fortunate to have known and worked with him,

Somewhere, a long way away, people are doing sensible things like mowing lawns and digging gardens.

I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers. I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars.

I'm aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That's just the way life is.

My marriage has worked because I am not around much.

If I am seen as successful, it's all the more reason not to change - not to lose track of friends, not to be driven everywhere, not to go and get away from the world. That, to me, is real success: enjoying what you do, but being the same person.

Geography prepares for the world of work - geographers, with their skills of analysis are highly employable!

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'.

[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all.

My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.

I will die, but not retire.

One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.

In the absence of fear there is little faith.

If atheists are deaf to the word of God, then theists are blind to the ways of man.

From my travels around the world I have seen how much damage and pollution is done by the careless disposal of waste. It is also evident that we in the West produce far more and throw away far more than the developing world, almost without thinking

Ronnie Barker was a straightforward man who had this extraordinary ability to make the nation laugh

The need to eat, sleep and dry out plays havoc with your sense of wonder.

It's not a model if it's full-size. It's a ice-breaker!

Once the travel bug bites, there is no known antidote.

It's not an easy option. The essence of travel is letting go of habit and prejudice and relishing the unfamiliar. Food you've never eaten before, a language you've never spoken before, religion that mystifies, customs that confuse, politics that perplex, all question everyday assumptions about how you live your life.

I mistrust total competence. I've always felt life is a series of small disasters we try to get through.

I remember queuing around the block in Sheffield when I was growing up. At that time, going to the cinema was really something special - there was something about the style of the real thing that is immeasurable nicer than multiplexes.

First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more-no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

George Harrison's passing was really sad, but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.

When in doubt, resort to animation.

You can't get a suit of armour and a rubber chicken just like that. You have to plan ahead.

It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them.

The Buddhist version of poverty is a situation where you have nothing to contribute.

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.

I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.

All I ask of food is that it doesn't harm me.

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.

Now, what sort of person would write a scene where a young man stumbles upon a castle full only of beautiful young women? Answer: ME!

There are many ways of seeing the world. You can hang upside down from a meteor, volunteer to be the fourth stage of a three-stage rocket, or simply get in a balloon and keep going. But if it's sheer, unadulterated discomfort you're looking for, just stay on land.

As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.

Geography is the subject which holds the key to our future

John Hall, my geography teacher at school inspired me to a lifelong interest in geography and a curiosity about our world which has stayed with me through my life. Geography is a living, breathing subject, constantly adapting itself to change. It is dynamic and relevant. For me geography is a great adventure with a purpose.

Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life