Michael Palin Quotes

It's a blessing and a curse, 'cause I'm never satisfied, so I continually want to outdo myself. But still, I'm never happy.

I think I am difficult to satisfy, because when I win something, I'm already thinking about the next step, and that is maybe a problem for me. I'm not enjoying the moment. I'm already on the mission to win the next trophy.

I always lived by railroads, and I would find places to just look at the horizon, and I always expected there was something somewhere else. And sometimes I think that's more a metaphysical somewhere else rather than just to get out of the town.

I wasn't unhappy, but I was a little like: 'Is this it? Really?' I was thirsty.

I have a character failing. I am quite incapable of identifying with anything whole-heartedly. Whatever I am doing, I am always planning to do something else. I would rather travel than arrive.

People who know me know I'm never satisfied.

I'm never content, and I don't know if that's a curse or a good thing.

I always feel discontent, like there's somewhere else to go, somewhere else to be. I'm a very ambitious person.

That's the thing with me: I'm never satisfied.

It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world.

Fishermen, no matter what supreme good fortune befalls them, cannot ever be absolutely satisfied. It is a fundamental weakness of intellect.

All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.

The human being is constantly torn from calm and peace of simple existence by two things; wanting what you don't have, or disliking what you have.

Buddhism has always been a religion for people who've worked their way through a cycle of materialism and still feel discontented and want more, or have questions that their state of prosperity is not answering.

Tired of myself longing for what I have not

I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.

We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me.

Almost all men are over anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor and on they go as their fathers went before them till weary and sick at heart they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood.

In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else.

Countries like ours are full of people who have all of the material comforts they desire, yet lead lives of quiet (and at times noisy) desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there is a hole inside them and that however much food and drink they pour into it, however many motorcars and television sets they stuff it with, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends they parade around the edges of it. . . it aches!

What are these voices outside love's open door, make us throw off our contentment, and beg for something more?

Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get.

The highly ambitious person, in spite of all his successes, always remains dissatisfied, in the same way as a greedy baby is never satisfied.

We're always looking for something.