John Cleese on intelligence

I’m struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.

Basil Fawlty was an easy character for me. For some reason, portraying a mean, uptight, incompetent bully comes naturally to me.

When you get to my age, and I’m 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn’t bother you much.

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

Albert Einstein1879–1955Out of My Later Years (1950), Ch. 51 “The Goal of Human Existence” (1943)

• God
• Thinking

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Ernest Hemingway1899–1961Marita in Ch. 11

• Happiness

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969

• Clever Jabs