Billy Connolly Quotations

I've always wanted to go to Switzerland to see what the army does with those wee red knives.

Never trust a man, who when left alone with a tea cosey... Doesn't try it on.

It seems to me that Islam and Christianity and Judaism all have the same god, and he's telling them all different things.

I don't know why I should have to learn Algebra... I'm never likely to go there.

I have been made redundant before and it is a terrible blow; redundant is a rotten word because it makes you think you are useless.

I love Los Angeles. It reinvents itself every two days.

There are two seasons in Scotland: June and Winter.

Once you become successful, people know where you live, the type of house you live in, the kind of car you drive, the clothes you wear, and so it would be patronising to go and talk like a welder. Welding's a mystery to me now. You can't go back, your life changes every day.

Marriage is a wonderful invention: then again, so is a bicycle repair kit.

My parents used to take me to the pet department and tell me it was a zoo.

Heckling is an act of cowardice. If you want to speak, get up in front of the microphone and speak, don't sit in the dark hiding. It's easy to hide and shout and waste people's time.

My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

Don't tell me how to do my job. I don't come to your workplace and tell you how to sweep up.

Behind the proscenium arch, you can't always hear what people in the audience are saying.

I like Dali and Magritte. I also like the Scottish artist John Byrne, another surrealist.

As soon as I got successful, the Scottish press started picking on me. It's something they reserve just for me.

Did your mother never tell you not to drink on an empty head?

Fame is being asked to sign your autograph on the back of a cigarette packet.

I've always been fascinated by the difference between the jokes you can tell your friends but you can't tell to an audience. There's a fine line you have to tread because you don't know who is out there in the auditorium. A lot of people are too easily offended.

The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll look exactly the same afterwards.

If Jesus was a Jew, how come he has a Mexican first name?

I don't have wild dogs chasing people with scripts away from my door. I get my share. I've done okay. But I usually do independent stuff because that's mostly what I'm offered.

I started to draw desert islands. They were just rough, shapes in the middle of the page. Then I began drawing shapes within those shapes and I was amazed how quickly the islands got better. It took off from there.

Ally MacLeod thinks that tactics are a new kind of mint.

I'm a citizen of the world. I like it that way. The world's a wonderful. I just think that some people are pretty badly represented. But when you speak to the people themselves they're delightful. They all want so little.

I think my securities far outweigh my insecurities. I am not nearly as afraid of myself and my imagination as I used to be.

I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God, but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do.

I don't believe in angels, no. But I do have a wee parking angel. It's on my dashboard and you wind it up. The wings flap and it's supposed to give you a parking space. It's worked so far.

I don't understand art-speak. My pictures are big doodles. I'm amazed what people come up with when they look at them. There's one of a figure with two heads that somebody thought must be a comment on the state of matrimony. None of it is a comment on anything.

I loathe hecklers. I haven't got a good syllable to say. When you come out of the club circuit and into the concert hall, they should be gone. There's an element of manners that should tell you that the ticket is dear and it's a different venue.

I still do my comedy and my performance stuff and my acting so it's not all-consuming. But I do find myself drawing more and more these days.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

I loved Japan. I used to read a lot about it when I was a child. And I always wanted to go. And it was delightful. I absolutely loved it. What a smashing place.

I don't believe in angels, no. . . . But I do have a wee parking angel. It's on my dashboard and you wind it up. The wings flap and it's supposed to give you a parking space. It's worked so far.

For years I thought the club's name was Partick Thistle Nil.

But still, I kept thinking, if I'm still troubled by this, if I'm still carrying it around like a big rucksack full of bricks and my father's dead, I need someone to tell me how to get rid of this great weight. . . . The most awful thing was that it was kind of pleasant physically, you know. That's why nobody tells.

I think that you'll find that Billy Connolly is British.

Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares?... He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!

The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one.

Why are there no windows in the toilets on aeroplanes? To protect you from the most dedicated perverts on the planet, hanging off the wing to get a peep?

A well-balanced person has a drink in each hand.

What is it with McDonald's staff who pretend they don't understand you unless you insert the 'Mc' before the item you're ordering? It has to be a McChicken burger...a chicken burger gets blank looks. Well, I'll have a McStraw and jam it into your McEyes, you f**cking McTosser!

I think age is terribly overrated. You're okay as long as you don't grow up. By all means grow old, but don't mature. Remain childlike, retain wonder, the ability to be flabbergasted by something.

Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he THINK he was doing at the time?

Life is supposed to be fun. It's not a job or occupation. We're here only once and we should have a bit of a laugh.

I think of my life as a series of moments and I've found that the great moments often don't have too much to them. They're not huge, complicated events; they're just magical wee moments when somebody says 'I love you' or 'You're a really good at what you do' or simply 'You're a good person'.

When I was 12, we went from Glasgow to Aberdeen on a school trip. It was called fresh air fortnight.

I’m actually pale blue: it takes me a week of sunbathing to turn white.

I hate all those weathermen, too, who tell you that rain is bad weather. There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing, so get yourself a sexy raincoat and live a little.

Scotland has the only football team in the world that does a lap of disgrace.

Never trust anybody with only one book.

I used to have Mad Cow's disease, but I'm alright Nooooooooow.

The human race has been set up. Someone, somewhere, is playing a practical joke on us. Apparently, women need to feel loved to have sex. Men need to have sex to feel loved. How do we ever get started.

There's no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes.

So, have you heard about the oyster who went to a disco and pulled a mussel?

Never trust people who've only got one book.

A woman's mind is as complex as the contents of her handbag; even when you get to the bottom of it, there is ALWAYS something at the bottom to surprise you!

If I had a hammer, there'd be no more folksingers.

If you give people a chance, they shine.

I don't like the beach. I think we have no business at the beach at all, as a species. We don't belong in the sea. The sea is full of things that bite us, sting us, hurt the soles of our feet, and it's extremely cold. When are we gonna take the hint that the things that live in the sea don't like us?

Wisdom isn't an old guy on top of a mountain in a loin cloth. It isn't an answer. It's a question.

I'd always been scared of people with tertiary education and high intellects in case they found me wanting. I thought they viewed me as just a welder who knew a few jokes.

I once travelled to Adelaide on Emu Airways. I was 5,000 ft up in the air when someone pointed out to me that emus can't fly

Whenever I wear something expensive it looks stolen.

Scottish-Americans tell you that if you want to identify tartans, it's easy - you simply look under the kilt, and if it's a quarter-pounder, you know it's a McDonald's.

American sex shops are the most bizarre. They sell these inflatable dolls, but they also sell just the head -- supposedly for people to drive along the highway with.

Where do you go when you die? The same place you were before you were born; nowhere! It's over!

When people say "it's always the last place you look". Of course it is. Why would you keep looking after you've found it?

I'm one of the school of people who don't do research of the reality of the thing or the unreality of the thing. In all the movies I've done, I've never done any research.

When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks, "Has the bus come yet?". If the bus came would I be standing here?

All anyone really needs to know about barbed wire is that it can tear the arse out of your trousers, give a cow a good fright, entangle a Yorkshire terrier for life, and is nasty stuff made by greedy men.

Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, but call it a haemorrhoid when it's on the outside of your ass?

Sex therapist claims that the most effective way to arouse your man is to spend 10 minutes licking his ears!! Personally, I think its bollocks!!

Don't die until you're dead.

Honestly some folk will take offence at anything, I met a bloke with no legs this morning while at the bus stop, all I asked was "How are you getting on?"

Paddy was in the delivery room when the midwife handed him a black baby. "Is this yours?" she asked "probably" said Paddy "she burns everything else"

What always staggers me is that when people blow their noses, they always look into their hankies to see what came out. What do they expect to find?

I can't believe in Christianity, but I think Jesus was a wonderful teacher.

I don't aim to offend.

When I read 'Be real, don't get caught acting,' I thought, 'How the hell do you do that?'.

If you don't know how to meditate at least try to spend some time every day just sitting.

I always look skint. When I buy a Big Issue, people take it out of my hand and give me a pound.

Chic Murray once told me he fell in the street, and a woman said to him, Did you fall? He said, No, I'm tryin' to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket.

Save the Trees? Trees are the main cause of Forest Fires!

People who are willing to get off their arse to search the entire room for the TV remote because they refuse to walk to the TV and change the channel manually.

It's my mind, and I reserve the right to change it as often as I like.

Don't buy one of those baby intercoms. Babies pretend to be dead. They're bastards, and they do it on purpose.

[To audience members who were arriving late] You haven't missed a thing, I was just killing time 'til you got here

The world needs more Edwin Morgans, people who can take the language and swing it round their heads and don't care what you think.

If you want to lose a bit of weight, don't eat anything out of a bucket.

Avoid people who say they know the answer. Keep the company of people who are trying to understand the question.

I am totally, absolutely romantic. When I broke up with a girl I would listen to the most heart-breaking music and make it worse. That's what girls do. I think I am a girl really.

The more you know the less the better.

People who announce they are going to the toilet. Thanks that's an image I really didn't need.

Learn to feel sorry for music because, although it is the international language, it has no swear words.

Don't work out, work in.

Try to catch a trout and experience the glorious feeling of letting it go and seeing it swimming away.

I'm a big fan of the Mars Bar Diet. You don't eat the Mars bar, you stick it up your arse and let a rottweiler chase you home.

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce - my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions - the absurdity of the thing.

I became a welder. I was actually becoming an Engineer and I joined the wrong queue. And so I became a welder, without knowing what a welder was.