17 Michael Palin Quotes

Michael Palin quotes

1. The use of the word 'just' by an Australian means that whatever it is you have to do, it will not be easy, as in 'Just pull that sword out of the stone' or 'Just split that atom'.

2. 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.

3. I wish them a long and happy life. If it's as long as their wedding, I'm sure they'll be fine.

4. One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.

5. The world won't be made safer by building barriers between people.

1. I've been lucky enough to stand on both poles, but the place that seemed the remotest to me was Butugychag, a former gulag in Siberia. It is completely cut off from the rest of the world.

2. I've always been blessed, or cursed, some might say, with an insatiable curiosity, a desire to find something out about a people and a place. That's where it all begins.

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

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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. The kids growing up is a separate strand to your life. However bad a day you've had, that's the most important thing, and you have to remember that.

8. Travelling, and being paid for it, is just great.

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

10. I do have high standards. I look at everything I have done and think, 'Why wasn't that better?' Part of my motivation is from crippling self-doubt - I have got to prove myself wrong.

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

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