Top 60 Ben Elton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Artists don’t create society, they reflect it.”

— Ben Elton

2. “It’s a curse to have a mind if it is illegal to use it. It’s a curse to have intelligence if you are forced to cloak it in a lifetime of wilful stupidity.”

— Ben Elton

3. “This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”

— Ben Elton

4. “I find the fact that billionaires are quoted as if the fact that they are billionaires gives them some kind of wisdom is outrageous.”

— Ben Elton

5. “People who get through life dependent on other people’s possessions are always the first to lecture you on how little possessions count.”

— Ben Elton

6. “I resent the creation of a world in which beauty is a reminder of what we’re losing rather than a celebration of what we have.”

— Ben Elton

7. “I loved writing ‘Two Brothers’ more than anything else I have written. It’s the first book I’ve written that I’ve always known I wanted to write. Having said that, it also kept me awake at nights.”

— Ben Elton

8. “I exercise hard and the reason I do is so that I can earn the things I like to consume.”

— Ben Elton

9. “The Germans are a cruel race. Their operas last for six hours and they have no word for fluffy.”

— Ben Elton

10. “For the past seventeen years I have been experimenting with lager. I am a lager user and one drug leads to another. If you do lager, as night follows day, you’ll end up doing Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

— Ben Elton

11. “We prefer “survivor”.’ ‘But this particular woman is dead,’ Matlock pointed out. ‘Yes.’ ‘So “survivor” isn’t really an appropriate term.’ ‘I’m aware of that. What we need is a new term for survivors of assault who died.”

— Ben Elton

12. “With privilege comes responsibility, you must understand that. People expect us to lead by example and we shall not disappoint them.”

— Ben Elton

13. “I’m easy to work with, not a pushover, but I respond to criticism and find it inspiring.”

— Ben Elton

14. “The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.”

— Ben Elton

15. “You didn’t wake up, your dreams just changed gear.”

— Ben Elton

16. “The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now... cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.”

— Ben Elton

17. “I’m lucky because the strongest emotion I have ever felt is being in love, and that definitely informs my writing.”

— Ben Elton

18. “Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them.”

— Ben Elton

19. “No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi.”

— Ben Elton

20. “I don’t know what people who I’ve never met think about me. Some have written horrible things, some have written nice things – but I’m proud of the fact I’ve remained close to everyone I’ve ever worked with.”

— Ben Elton

21. “Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar. You have to hold it, you have to read it.”

— Ben Elton

22. “And roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is my personal signature dish.”

— Ben Elton

23. “You think I look like a teletubby?”

— Ben Elton

24. “When the phone rings at 2.15am in the morning it’s unlikely to be heralding something pleasant. What chance is there of its being good news? None. Only someone bad would ring at such an hour. Or someone with bad news.”

— Ben Elton

25. “I did not vote Labour because they’ve heard of Oasis and nobody is going to vote Tory because William Hague has got a baseball cap.”

— Ben Elton

26. “History is made by people. And the majority of people are arseholes. Which is I suppose why the majority of history has been so disastrous.”

— Ben Elton

27. “Yes, OK, farty is a silly word. I wish I’d never used it. I’m 34. Perhaps it was a word for my 20s.”

— Ben Elton

28. “Screw humanity. I don’t give the whole stinking bunch of us more than a couple of generations and good riddance. The universe is better off without us.”

— Ben Elton

29. “I don’t consider myself Jewish. I am half-Jewish by race but not through my mother.”

— Ben Elton

30. “The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.”

— Ben Elton

31. “My parents were secular. I am an atheist.”

— Ben Elton

32. “If only the strength of the love that people feel when it is reciprocated could be as intense and obsessive as the love we feel when it is not; then marriages would be truly made in heaven.”

— Ben Elton

33. “You’re mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund.”

— Ben Elton

34. “Comedy will always be central to what I do, it’s just an instinct for me, but I am a writer and always have been.”

— Ben Elton

35. “You... you don’t look like a Jew,′ she heard him mumble. ‘What does a Jew look like, you fatuous bastard’? – ‘Do you think I should have a nose like a boat hook, you stupid old prick!”

— Ben Elton

36. “Because they’re twins. they’ve got each other, wolf. This is a tough town in a tough world. But no matter how tough it get – our boys will always have each other.”

— Ben Elton

37. “There are lots of things I could have done for the money, but I’ve made a great living doing the things I want to do.”

— Ben Elton

38. “A time when the miracles of technology were still virile and exciting: steam engines and flying machines, not smart phones and cosmetic surgery. When there were still wildernesses left to explore and mountains left unclimbed.”

— Ben Elton

39. “My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they’ve read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!”

— Ben Elton

40. “I try hard not to preach, but I get carried away, which is a mistake, but it’s a risk worth running.”

— Ben Elton

41. “She spoke loudly in order to be heard above the noise of personal communitainers that were thudding and banging all around them. Some people used earphones, some didn’t, clearly believing that as many people as possible should be given the opportunity to appreciate their musical taste. That, combined with the mass leakage from the headsets, created a terrible din and even discreet private conversations had to be conducted at a yell.”

— Ben Elton

42. “Leaders should never, ever try to look cool – that’s for dictators.”

— Ben Elton

43. “I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition – and I have never suffered from it.”

— Ben Elton

44. “As long as he lived Coleridge did not believe he would understand how a single race of beings could include both Jesus Christ and the sort of people who would download a video of a young woman being murdered. He rather supposed that had been the Messiah’s point, but that didn’t make it any easier to understand or accept.”

— Ben Elton

45. “And through all that dreadful darkness she had remembered him. He who loved her. He who still loved her. Who would always love her.”

— Ben Elton

46. “We’ve just lost our way, that’s all. But what if you could give us a chance to do better? Just one chance? One single move in the great game of history? What’s your best shot? What would you consider to be the greatest mistake in world history and, more to the point, what single thing would you do to prevent it?”

— Ben Elton

47. “It was not the first time people had taken a good square look at Armaggedon and decided that they would prefer it to happen to somebody else. Ever since Noah built the Ark, the seductive notion that it is possible to opt out, to stand on the sidelines whilst global cataclysm passess you by, has exercised a strong pull.”

— Ben Elton

48. “What the matter wit’ your momma? She only know one name?’ Stone.”

— Ben Elton

49. “We’ve all got to look at ourselves, start with yourself, that’s all you can do. I believe that we can act responsibly as a group, it’s just that there are vested interests telling us not to bother.”

— Ben Elton

50. “I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality.”

— Ben Elton