64 Great Quotes By Michael Palin That Will Make You Laugh
You can't get a suit of armour and a rubber chicken just like that. You have to plan ahead.
One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience.
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.
There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe.
People are still crazy about Python after twenty-five years, which I find hard to believe.
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 always wanted to be an explorer, but - it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person.
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 am restless. I don't mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village.
I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.
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.
The human race should just slow down and think about what it is doing.
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 will die, but not retire.
'Nice' means nothing. Is it someone who doesn't swear and shout? I swear and shout. 'Nice' sounds ineffectual.
I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.
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.
