Top 60 Eric Idle Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life has a very simple plot: first you’re here and then you’re not.”

— Eric Idle

2. “I believe in the separation of church and planet.”

— Eric Idle

3. “Life doesn’t make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy’s job is to point out that it doesn’t make sense, and that it doesn’t make much difference anyway.”

— Eric Idle

4. “Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is “beware”. This is not a wine for drinking; this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.”

— Eric Idle

5. “Always look on the brighter side of life.”

— Eric Idle

6. “Never do things for money. It’s always the things you do for love that turn out to pay the best.”

— Eric Idle

7. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.”

— Eric Idle

8. “Talent is always more interesting – ambition is not interesting. If you have talent, you have to find ways of expressing it, but you may not be a success in the world’s terms.”

— Eric Idle

9. “Bear in mind the simple rule, X squared to the power of two minus five over the seven point eight three times nineteen is approximately equal to the cube root of MCC squared divided by X minus a quarter of a third percent. Keep that in mind, and you can’t go very far wrong.”

— Eric Idle

10. “Know what I mean? Eh, eh, Nudge nudge, Say no more?”

— Eric Idle

11. “What’s brown and sounds like a bell? DUNG!”

— Eric Idle

12. “Life took over 4 billion years to evolve into you, and you’ve about 70 more years to enjoy it. Don’t just pursue happiness, catch it.”

— Eric Idle

13. “I pay taxes in three countries, but can’t vote in any of them.”

— Eric Idle

14. “I won’t read scripts because I have a limited amount of time. Why should I help other people do lame stuff when I can just go out and put on lame stuff of my own?”

— Eric Idle

15. “Pattycake, pattycake, baker’s man; good morning, madam, I’m a psychiatrist.”

— Eric Idle

16. “A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate.”

— Eric Idle

17. “I will jump on anybody’s private plane at the drop of a hat. I’m an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.”

— Eric Idle

18. “Typical Hollywood crowd – all the kids are on drugs, and all the adults are on roller skates.”

— Eric Idle

19. “I used to have a house in London, but couldn’t face 20 more years of St John’s Wood in the rain.”

— Eric Idle

20. “Elvis saved my life when I was 13 or 14. He saved all our lives.”

— Eric Idle

21. “A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat!”

— Eric Idle

22. “No day of my life passes without someone saying the words ‘Monty Python’ to me. It’s not bad.”

— Eric Idle

23. “Nobody gets irony anymore, as we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George Bush gets a library, our irony is dead.”

— Eric Idle

24. “I think you often learn from failure. Success just teaches you how great you were, but in fact it’s knowing what will fail that will help you to make the right choices.”

— Eric Idle

25. “When I was 23 I started writing for I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again and was paid three guineas for every minute’s airtime.”

— Eric Idle

26. “When, in 1966, I progressed to The Frost Report, I was paid ten guineas a minute. I was guaranteed three minutes a week, so this was good money.”

— Eric Idle

27. “To me, the musical is best when it’s a musical comedy. So if you have a very, very funny show, and very good, funny songs, that’s what the musical does best.”

— Eric Idle

28. “I love being an older comic now. It’s like being an old soccer or an old baseball player. You’re in the Hall of Fame and it’s nice, but you’re no longer that person in the limelight on the spot doing that thing.”

— Eric Idle

29. “The dreadful thing about getting older is you cry at the drop of a hat.”

— Eric Idle

30. “I’ve always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones.”

— Eric Idle

31. “I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority.”

— Eric Idle

32. “I used to collect Persian rugs and real estate – you should be able to walk on and live in your money. I had to give up the rugs because I’m allergic to mould.”

— Eric Idle

33. “You initially become funny as a kid because you’re looking for attention and love. Psychologists think that’s all to do with mother abandonment. I think John Cleese has his depressions, and Terry Gilliam’s the same. All of us together make one completely insane person.”

— Eric Idle

34. “My wife, Tania, is very big on dogs, so I’m always paying out to animal charities.”

— Eric Idle

35. “I’m not careful with my money at all these days. I buy people a lot of dinners!”

— Eric Idle

36. “I’ve got soggy thighs. It must be dinner time.”

— Eric Idle

37. “My first professional job was appearing in a disastrous theatre production of Oh, What a Lovely War in Leicester Rep, shortly after leaving Cambridge.”

— Eric Idle

38. “If this isn’t exactly what went down, it’s certainly how it should have happened.”

— Eric Idle

39. “If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.”

— Eric Idle

40. “I never pay any attention to figures.”

— Eric Idle

41. “Having little money to spend was a valuable learning experience. My schooling also shaped my work ethic because while other children were listening to the Goons, I was studying, which enabled me to go to Cambridge University.”

— Eric Idle

42. “Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.”

— Eric Idle

43. “Reading Alan Zweibel makes me laugh out loud. And yet it is not a particularly funny name.”

— Eric Idle

44. “Laughter is the only sane response to pathological lying.”

— Eric Idle

45. “Many years ago I also bought a house in Provence for about 70,000 francs. It had no electricity or running water, and no road leading to the house, but gradually we made improvements. It’s my escape and I love it.”

— Eric Idle

46. “I have British teeth. They are like British politics: they go in all directions at once.”

— Eric Idle

47. “If one of the best ways to appreciate life is to have an unhappy childhood, I was very fortunate.”

— Eric Idle

48. “I never think in terms of target audience. I try to write what makes me laugh, so I’m the target audience. I guess I just hope there’s another person in America like me.”

— Eric Idle

49. “Americans like to think ‘Python’ is how English people really are. There is an element of truth to that.”

— Eric Idle

50. “I think, after all, I’m happiest being a foreigner. Perhaps there should be a Homo sapiens passport? I feel less and less connected to individual states, and more and more connected to human beings.”

— Eric Idle