If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas
Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote humorously suggests that life inevitably ends, and it plays on the idea of life's intimacy with human relationships.
John Cleese's quote uses dark humor to highlight the inevitability of death, framing life itself as a terminal condition that we all share. The second part of the quote introduces a playful yet provocative angle, suggesting that life's challenges and joys are intertwined with our personal connections, particularly in a sexual or intimate context. This combination of humor and truth can provoke reflection on the nature of life and relationships.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the humor in life's struggles, this quote can lightheartedly address the audience.
More from John Cleese
All quotes →Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.
If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time to be considering alternative strategies.
In Britain, girls seem to be either bright or attractive. In America, that's not the case. They're both.
I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
Similar quotes
I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, 'Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.' I spent last summer folding it. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, 'E6.
Middle age is when you still believe you'll feel better in the morning.
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.
Bunbury? Oh, he was quite exploded. Exploded! Was he the victim of a revolutionary outrage? I was not aware that Mr. Bunbury was interested in social legislation. If so, he is well punished for his morbidity. My dear Aunt Augusta, I mean he was found out! The doctors found out that Bunbury could not , that is what I mean—so Bunbury died. He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians.
It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives ... thank you.
It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared - we were working before, on average, 240, live people. If you could get them caring - the more they cared, the harder they laughed.