Clive James quotes

Clive James was an Australian writer, poet, broadcaster, and literary critic, renowned for his wit and insightful commentary. His work spanned television, print, and poetry, gaining him a wide international following. He is remembered for his sharp intellect, humor, and distinctive voice in literary and cultural criticism. Here are 142 of his quotes:

Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.

Clive James

Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.

Clive James

A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all.

Clive James

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.

Clive James

Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.

Clive James

Among artists without talent Marxism will always be popular, since it enables them to blame society for the fact that nobody wants to hear what they have to say.

Clive James

Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.

Clive James

In the twelfth century the Basque fishermen of Biarritz used to hunt whales with deadly efficiency. When the whales sensibly moved away, the Basques chased them further and further, with the consequence that the fishermen of Biarritz discovered America before Columbus did. This is a matter for local pride but on a larger view it is not quite so stunning, since with the possible exception of the Swiss everybody discovered America before Columbus did.

Clive James

Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.

Clive James

The entrée wasn't tender enough to be a paving stone and the gravy couldn't have been primordial soup because morphogenesis was already taking place.

Clive James

All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.

Clive James

First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.

Clive James

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

Clive James

His pear-shaped head, I could now see, was situated on top of a pear-shaped body, which his black gown caused to resemble a piece of fruit going to a funeral.

Clive James

It is almost better to be an impulse shirt-buyer than an impulse shoe-buyer. I have worn shirts that made people think I was a retired Mafia hit-man or a Yugoslavian sports convener from Split, but I have worn shoes that made people think I was insane.

Clive James

In The Bob Hope Golf Classic (LWT) the participation of President Gerald Ford was more than enough to remind you that the nuclear button was at one stage at the disposal of a man who might have either pressed it by mistake or else pressed it deliberately in order to obtain room service.

Clive James

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

Clive James

I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.

Clive James

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks...

Clive James

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.

Clive James

Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.

Clive James

A sense of humour is common sense dancing.

Clive James