140 Quotes by Michael Palin

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 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.

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.

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

They are trying their best to indict a young generation, who seem to be setting a triumphant example to the older generation – an example of how to enjoy oneself, something which most Englishmen don’t seem really capable of, especially the cynical pressmen of the News of the World. It’s all very sad.

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.

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.

Talk to a Dutch journalist for an hour. He has 38 questions.

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.