Eric Idle Quotes

Everybody I know who is funny, it's in them. You can teach timing, or some people are able to tell a joke, though I don't like to tell jokes. But I think you have to be born with a sense of humor and a sense of timing.

My senior year of high school, I was voted 'Wittiest.' So, several years later, I decided to try my hand at writing humor to see if I could be witty enough to make some money.

I always really loved comedy. It's the only thing I was ever good at.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson is probably one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life. Everything the kid does is funny. I think he tunes his life to being funny.

I don't just try to be funny.

I like humor: the sort of gentle humor that points out human foibles.

Everything I say is a joke. I am a joke myself.

Incongruity, they say, is one of the main ingredients of humor. Maybe it's because everybody can feel superior to me. I honestly don't know.

I do sarcasm really poorly.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

But I've never looked at myself as being particularly funny.

Eddie Murphy said once in an interview that nothing is offensive if it's funny. I sort of agree with that, but if something's funny and you're the subject of it, sometimes it's more offensive. If someone's insulting you, you want them to sound like an idiot.

For me, if I were to be at home in any kind of style, it is more comedy than anything else.

If I don't offend somebody, then I'm probably not funny.

People often can't separate, or can't understand, that to be funny is to be serious; it's a way of pulling people in and not scaring them off. I think a lot of the funny stuff, underneath it, there's a deep anxiety going on.

Phil Hartman was brilliant, and Dave Foley is a really funny guy. Phil Hartman was actually even funnier offstage than he was onstage because he would say nasty things. Dave Foley's very funny, very witty guy, very quick.

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.

I'm not a particularly shiny, happy person. I'm fairly cynical, and that's what draws me to comedy.

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

I definitely prefer working in comedy over drama, but at the same time, when it comes to comedy, I tend to prefer comedies that have a great sense of truth to them and that come from an honest place.

I think I've been called edgy - but in all honesty, there is a safety in what I do because I'm always the idiot. Unless you're just listening to buzz words and not taking into account the context of the situation, you see I'm always the ignoramus.

My comedy isn't going to solve problems; I'm not that deep.

Actually being funny is mostly telling the truth about things.

The pun exists in a social and political void, caring nothing for the issues of its day, content merely to display itself in its small cleverness.

Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth.