Monty Python Famous Quotes

The third of the biblical Ten Commandments instructs humans never to make wrongful use of the name of God. People tend to understand this in a childish way, as a prohibition on uttering the explicit name of God (as in the famous Monty Python sketch 'If you say Jehovah...'). Perhaps the deeper meaning of this commandment is that we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions, or our personal hatreds. As a resident of the Middle East I am keenly aware how often people break this commandment. The world would be a much better place if we followed it more devotedly. You want to wage war on your neighbours and steal their land? Leave God out of it, and find yourself some other excuse.

That is often how collaboration works in a Slow Fix. Check your ego at the door, be prepared to share the credit, and let the creative juices start flowing. That was how Monty Python minted some of the most famous sketches in the comedy canon. One member of the troupe, John Cleese, summed up the genesis thus: “The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.

The only two modes your brain actually has and how to use them John Cleese, cofounder of Monty Python, knows a few things about removing access. Freeing your brain from the tyranny of “busy.” He is famous for removing access and creating space in his life. What was the effect? Oh, not much. Just scoring Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations and being in more than a hundred movies all the way into his seventies. As John described it in a speech to the organization Video Arts, we are in closed mode “most of the time when we’re at work. We have inside us a feeling that there’s lots to be done and we have to get on with it if we’re going to get through it all. It’s an active, probably slightly anxious mode, although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable . . . It’s a mode in which we’re very purposeful and it’s a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic.” What’s the opposite of this? John calls it open mode. That’s where your brain is free and playful and capable of achieving greatness. Sound slightly counterintuitive? Maybe. But by closing off access to your brain . . . you’re opening up your mind. “By contrast,” John says, “the open mode is a relaxed, expansive, less purposeful mode in which we’re probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor . . . and consequently, more playful. It’s a mode in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we’re not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.