Top 60 Michael Palin Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Geography is the subject which holds the key to our future.”

— Michael Palin

2. “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”

— Michael Palin

Featured in: Travel Quotes

3. “Geography prepares for the world of work – geographers, with their skills of analysis are highly employable!”

— Michael Palin

4. “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.”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

6. “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.”

— Michael Palin

Featured in: Volunteer Quotes

7. “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.”

— Michael Palin

8. “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.”

— Michael Palin

9. “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.”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

11. “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?”

— Michael Palin

12. “I will die, but not retire.”

— Michael Palin

13. “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.”

— Michael Palin

14. “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.”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

19. “You can’t get a suit of armour and a rubber chicken just like that. You have to plan ahead.”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

22. “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.”

— Michael Palin

23. “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.”

— Michael Palin

24. “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.”

— Michael Palin

25. “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.”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

29. “I want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy.”

— Michael Palin

30. “All I ask of food is that it doesn’t harm me.”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

33. “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.”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

35. “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.”

— Michael Palin

36. “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!”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

41. “In the absence of fear there is little faith.”

— Michael Palin

42. “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.”

— Michael Palin

43. “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.”

— Michael Palin

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

— Michael Palin

45. “My marriage has worked because I am not around much.”

— Michael Palin

46. “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.”

— Michael Palin

47. “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.”

— Michael Palin

48. “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.”

— Michael Palin

49. “George Harrison’s passing was really sad, but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.”

— Michael Palin

50. “When in doubt, resort to animation.”

— Michael Palin