“I’m more critical of the films I make than anyone else.”

The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness – and the other represents oppression.

Sometimes I don’t feel like going to work but then I remember I was born cute not rich.

The older you get, the more you realise how happenstance has helped to determine your path through life.

People think because I can make them laugh on the stage, I’ll be able to make them laugh in person. That isn’t the case at all. I am essentially a rather quiet, dull person who just happens to be a performer.

I’m as poor as a church mouse, that’s just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese.

I’m not looking for anything other than an interesting role to play.

The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.

I’m not a collector. I don’t like the toy cupboard syndrome that causes so many good cars to evaporate.

I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.

I like to juggle with one ball at a time. Then I put the ball down and do nothing for extended periods of time.

Mr. Bean is essentially a child trapped in the body of a man. All cultures identify with children in a similar way, so he has this bizarre global outreach.

I have always worried about things more than I should.

In TV, and in particular in commercials, you don’t really need to explain very much at all.

A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.

Funny things tend not to happen to me. I am not a natural comic. I need to think about things a lot before I can be even remotely amusing.

I have always regarded Mr. Bean as a timeless, ageless character, and I would rather he be remembered as a character mostly in his 30s and 40s.

Critics only speak up when they see someone shining. Average work doesn’t threaten them.

Don’t let people’s compliments go to your head, and don’t let their criticisms go to your heart. The degree to which you do either of these things is the degree to which you’ll be ruled by what other people think of you.

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

Among the social networks, LinkedIn can be one of the most useful when it comes to cultivating critical, lucrative business opportunities, since it has a high concentration of business decision makers.

Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.

Circumstances and crises are God’s tools to move you into your purpose and the maximizing of your potential.

Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.