Michael Palin quotes

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

#Inspirational #Funny #Travel

One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle.
-- Michael Palin

#Cycling #Important #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.
-- Michael Palin

#Art #Travel #Perfect

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

#Writing #House #Feelings

I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.
-- Michael Palin

#People #Argument #Cautious

All I ask of food is that it doesn't harm me.
-- Michael Palin

#Harm

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

#Land #Volunteer #World

I want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy.
-- Michael Palin

#People #Want #Somalia

The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience.
-- Michael Palin

#Travel #Journey #Trouble

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

#Religious #Thinking #Leader

I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.
-- Michael Palin

#Writing #Thinking #Modern

I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.
-- Michael Palin

#Finding Yourself #Sometimes

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

#Character #People #Useless

I would love to go to Iran. The island of Madagascar, everyone says is pretty exotic, or the wonderful Namibian desert.
-- Michael Palin

#Iran #Islands #Exotic

I will die, but not retire.
-- Michael Palin

#Retiring

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.
-- Michael Palin

#Curiosity #World #Window

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

#Years #Leaving #Mind

I can be me, and people seem quite happy with that.
-- Michael Palin

#People

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

#Years #Awards #Achievement

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.
-- Michael Palin

#Blessed #Careers #Two

I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.
-- Michael Palin

#People #One Day #Saws

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

#Flower #Cutting #Tree

The need to eat, sleep and dry out plays havoc with your sense of wonder.
-- Michael Palin

#Sleep #Play #Dry

Geography prepares for the world of work - geographers, with their skills of analysis are highly employable!
-- Michael Palin

#Skills #World #Analysis

John Hall, my geography teacher at school inspired me to a lifelong interest in geography and a curiosity about our world which has stayed with me through my life. Geography is a living, breathing subject, constantly adapting itself to change. It is dynamic and relevant. For me geography is a great adventure with a purpose.
-- Michael Palin

#Teacher #School #Adventure

It's not a model if it's full-size. It's a ice-breaker!
-- Michael Palin

#Ice #Size #Models

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

#Way #Life Is #Circumstances

Once the travel bug bites, there is no known antidote.
-- Michael Palin

#Bugs #Antidote

It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them.
-- Michael Palin

#Suicide #Baby #War

First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more-no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.
-- Michael Palin

#Naughty #Sight #Hands

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.
-- Michael Palin

#Struggle #Thinking #People

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

#Men #Laughing #Ability

One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.
-- Michael Palin

#Goodbye #Saying Goodbye #Difficult

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

#Thinking #Around The World #Waste

If atheists are deaf to the word of God, then theists are blind to the ways of man.
-- Michael Palin

#Atheist #Men #Religion

In the absence of fear there is little faith.
-- Michael Palin

#Religion #Atheism #Littles

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

#Growing Up #Real #Block

The human race should just slow down and think about what it is doing.
-- Michael Palin

#Thinking #Race #Down And

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

#People #Doe #Desert

George Harrison's passing was really sad, but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.
-- Michael Palin

#Death #Afterlife #Doe

The Buddhist version of poverty is a situation where you have nothing to contribute.
-- Michael Palin

#Buddhist #Poverty #Situation

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

#Lying #Government #Ponds

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

#People #Trying #Quality

There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe.
-- Michael Palin

#Country #World #Safe

Please don't ask which I enjoy more - acting or hosting - because I love them equally.
-- Michael Palin

#Acting #Enjoy #Please

People say the most stupid things on the spur of the moment that they then have to retract.
-- Michael Palin

#Stupid #People #Spur Of The Moment

People are still crazy about Python after twenty-five years, which I find hard to believe.
-- Michael Palin

#Crazy #Believe #Python

'Nice' means nothing. Is it someone who doesn't swear and shout? I swear and shout. 'Nice' sounds ineffectual.
-- Michael Palin

#Nice #Mean #Sound

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

#Groups #Large Groups

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

#Religious #Believe #Creating

I always wanted to be an explorer, but - it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person.
-- Michael Palin

#Stupid #Silly #Wanted

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

#Strong #Adventure #Years

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

#Numbers #Track #Lucky

You can't get a suit of armour and a rubber chicken just like that. You have to plan ahead.
-- Michael Palin

#Rubber #Suits #Chickens

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.
-- Michael Palin

#Morning #Atheist #Believe

My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.
-- Michael Palin

#Years #Two #Parent

[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all.
-- Michael Palin

#Running #People #Competition

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

#Believe #Diversity #People

Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.
-- Michael Palin

#Queens #Fall #Night

You don't ask people about the immigration policies of the U.K. or their country's agricultural policy. Instead, you talk to them about the meal they're eating or their family, and from that you get the sense of another human being, someone we can all relate to.
-- Michael Palin

#Country #People #Meals

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.
-- Michael Palin

#Notebook #Eye #Trying

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

#Thinking #Order #Ego

Geography is the subject which holds the key to our future
-- Michael Palin

#Keys #Geography #Our Future