Eric Idle Comedy Quotations

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

I think he's the most intelligent man I've ever met. Honesty, simplicity and truth are the secret to his comedy.

We're all over 60. I'm sorry to say this, but comedy is really a young man's game. It's sort of about what you had to say when you were fresh and young. And I'm perfectly happy to get drunk with the rest of them.

I don't necessarily know much about comedy, I don't spend a lot of time watching it. Mainly because all my life for about 50 years I've had comedy.

Executives do not on the whole do well with comedy. They can't understand it, they can't read it, they can't spot it.

I got locked into a tradition [at Cambridge] of doing comedy.

When we graduated [ from Cambridge], we were grabbed right into television. I was grabbed straight into the practice of writing comedy. It was all writing and performing. You wrote something in order for you to perform it.

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. 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.