Eddie Izzard quotes:

So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naive, I feel!

I'm quite good at taking in information so I voraciously inhale Wikipedia - which may have some things wrong in it, but I think is generally more information than we had before. Last tour we didn't have Wikipedia. And then Discovery Channel and History Channel. I can take it in and retain what I think are the most important facts.

If you've never seen an elephant ski, you've never been on acid.

Religion and philosophy, philosophy and religion - they're two words which are both... different. In spelling.

Charles Darwin wrote a famous book in 18 gibberish. And that book was an interesting book, cuz it was called "Monkey-Monkey-Monkey-Monkey-Monkey-Monkey-You"

Fox hunting, there's big fox hunting thing, there's arguments in Britain about fox hunting. And they go around. They obviously hunt foxes because the foxes, they attack chickens. And posh people have an alliance with chickens just like in the First World War.

In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up.

Because we all know one of the main factors of war is the element of surprise. And what could be more surprising than the First Batallion Transvestite Brigade? Airborne Wing.

Scrabble was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia.

I just believe in the goodwill of people, the power of people to do something positive.

Boy bands should be exploded from a great height. They're just pretty people singing music written by others.

When I watched Braveheart I was in tears and I was rooting for the Scottish people

I am encyclopaedic on World War II. My dad took me to D-Day beaches when I was a kid. I was there four years ago - every five years they have a remembrance on D-Day beaches and I would have liked to have been there and done my bit.

Scrabble was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia. This is true, they proved this one. The word dyslexia was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia.

If there is a God, his plan is very similar to someone not having a plan.

Someone's killed 100,000 people. We're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym. Your diary must look odd: 'Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death - lunch - death, death, death - afternoon tea - death, death, death - quick shower ...' "

They tend to come out a colour called 'Pants left in wash'

And the druids, they were into sex and death in an interesting night-time telly sort of way.

I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from.

The Death Star is just full of British actors opening doors and going,Oh... I... oh... What is it Lieutenant Sebastian? It's just the Rebels, sir... they're here. My God, man! Do they want tea? No, I think they're after something a bit more than that, sir. I don't know what it is, but they've brought a flag. Damn, that's dash cunning of them.

There was no religion in my life growing up. Did God invent us or did we invent God?

Everyone gets cards at the beginning of life. I am transgender, I decided to be honest and tell everyone about it, and that's it.

This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard flight...one, from...here to there. We'll be cruising at a height of ten feet, going up to twelve and a half feet if we see anything big. And our copilot today is a flask of coffee.

I like my coffee like I like my women. In a plastic cup.

I can go from blokey to girlie in 15 minutes and then I'm out the door. But that's the fastest I can do it. Becoming a woman takes work.

If you go down as a comedian's comedian, that's basically meaning other comedians are hopefully feeling that you're doing okay.

I'd be happy to be taken as a woman - and that's what I was initially trying to do when I started throwing on dresses and stuff. But that wasn't going to happen because everyone kept calling me sir. So I thought I'd change the method and just start wearing what I wanted to wear.

I'm an action transvestite really, so it's running, jumping, climbing trees putting on make-up when you're up there!

I don't subscribe to the theory that all politicians are crap. I think the 'cool people' often take that position.

I'm a dyslexic person, so I avoid books.

San Francisco! City of dreaming spires, people live here... Golden Gate Bridge, ahh the Romans came here.

My Gran said put a thimble on your finger and it helps you in case you slip with the needle and it goes up, into the brain, and death.

Honey bees are amazing creatures. I mean, think about it, do earwigs make chutney?

Horseshoes are lucky. Horses have four bits of lucky nailed to their feet. They should be the luckiest animals in the world. They should rule the country. They should win all their horse races, at least. 'In the fifth race today, every single horse was first equal...one horse threw a shoe came in third...the duck was ninth...and five ran.'

There's a thing about trying too hard, which I think is in all forms, which is if you really try to do things really well, you can get to a less good place than if you just let go and let it fly. Especially in creativity.

It's my manifest destiny to wear a skirt in all countries.

How to survive boarding school. Do not express emotion, do not feel emotion, do not have emotion. If someone hits you, hit them back, if someone argues with you, argue back, never give in an inch, never look vulnerable and you will survive.

There's not much makeup in the army, is there? No. They only have that nighttime look, and that's a bit slapdash, isn't it?

I don't believe in God. So I'm a non-believer in the non-visible. I'm a believer in us; in humans.

Puberty is the sickest joke God plays on us. So you're just noticing members of the sex: "Girls girls, ooo". Naturally you want to look your best, and God says "No! You will look the worst you've ever looked in your life!"

Performance enhancing drugs are banned in the Olympics. OK, we can swing with that. But performance 'debilitating' drugs should not be banned. Smoke a joint and win the 100 metres, fair play for you. That's pretty good. Unless someone's dangling a Mars bar off in the distance.

He [Charlie Chaplin] was always playing as if it were to the camera, if you've seen the live shots of him when he's going to an opening night or something like that. And the skills that he had were beyond my ability to throw together. You just couldn't really compete with him. He was too athletic at that.

So in Europe, we had empires. Everyone had them - France and Spain and Britain and Turkey! The Ottoman Empire, full of furniture for some reason. And the Austro-Hungarian Empire, famous for f-k all! Yes, all they did was slowly collapse like a flan in a cupboard.

This is a world that's big enough for everyone. I like that message in that comes out of John Lasseter, and it comes out Pixar, it comes out of the Apple, Google, the Ben and Jerry's thing. These are American companies that send that message around that is good, that is healthy. And everyone goes, "That's the America I always believed in before Watergate."

When I first came out, I thought, I want to walk like a real woman, I don't want to do mincing steps. And there was some girl I saw walking up Holloway Road in Islington who had this long languid walk and I thought, that's what I like, so I incorporated her walk into mine.

I'm covered in bees!

Cats have a scam going - you buy the food, they eat the food, they go away; that's the deal.

People still talk about a British sense of humour, or French slapstick or how the Germans have no sense of humour - and it's just rubbish. I do strongly feel that we are all the bloody same.

There's two positions in snowboarding. One is looking cool and the other is DEAD!

When you're coming out, you have to deal with the whole world saying 'Oh! You're an abominable snowman'.

Never put a sock in a toaster.

When you're more mature, you do start telling the truth, in odd situations. 'I'm sorry, I've broken a glass here. Is that expensive? I'll pay for it. I'm sorry.' And you do that so that people in the room might go, 'What a strong personality that person has. I like to have sex with people with strong personalities.'

I try to just talk about human stories and what I think about religion or teapots or whatever.

I definitely have breast envy. When teenage girls were saying 'I wish I had breasts', I was thinking the same thing.

But puberty was... well, before puberty, at school, I didn't tell kids I was a transvestite 'cause I thought they might kill me with sticks, you know?

Most transvestites fancy girls.

I'm an Action Transvestite

If you get anything creative going, then the work and play thing is the same thing, I feel.

I'm a one-man idiot.

I use a Bruce Lee technique: 'The way of no way.' He had the idea that he would learn everything, so that whoever he had to fight, he could improvise anything. The best way of starting a gig is just to not think of anything - to clear your mind, not in an empty Zen state, but more just to go on and see where you go.

I felt audiences are happier to take comedy people who play darker people because there's a link between the psychosis of comedy and the psychosis of being a twisted character.

I try to keep performing as much as possible - I just like to. I used to take huge gaps off between gigs, now I just like to do stand-up gigs as much as I can.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

Animals in the wild are lean, and I think we should be too.

Theyâ??re not womenâ??s clothes. Theyâ??re my clothes. I bought them.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people, and monkeys do too (if they have a gun).

Danger could be my middle name... But it's John.

Your eyes flashed fire into my soul. I immediately read the words of Dostoyevsky and Karl Marx, and in the words of Albert Schweitzer, I FANCY YOU!

I'm into humanity. I don't believe in God, but I believe in human beings.

If there were a god, don't you think he would have flicked Hitler's head off?

If you think about determination, if people have a heart and are determined, they can get to that place. But there are a lot of negative people who were enormously determined. All the Nazis were determined. They wanted to murder everyone. Everyone with a bad heart, who doesn't care about people, I wish they hadn't started.

MAC gave me 55 lipsticks to test. These are the same lipsticks I got caught stealing by the police when I was 15. How ironic.

I don't believe in God. I believe gods and devils are within us. It's our own battle. Our life's battle is to appeal to the gods within us, and to fight the devils within us.

We have two hundred languages in Europe. Two hundred languages! Count them! I know you won't!

My sexuality is straight transvestite or male lesbian. It seems we are beyond the idea that I am gay and hiding it. If I had to describe how I feel in my head, I'd say I'm a complete boy plus half a girl. I don't seem to have the sixth sense that women have or their stronger senses of taste and smell. Gay men can also have it but straight men don't.

I wear whatever I want whenever I want. I don't call it drag; I don't even call it cross-dressing. It's just wearing a dress.

I remember when I was being told about Watergate, and I thought, "Oh, America is not what I think America is." But America is what I think it is. It's just that it's two bits of it, and I don't go with the Republican bit of it. I go more with the Democratic bit.

I wanna live 'til I die, no more, no less.

What was the first cat that talked a human into putting a cat door in?

I like my coffee hot and strong. Like I like my women: hot and strong...with a spoon in them.

Cable cars are fun - everyone gets on board and becomes a rhesus monkey.

Racist people, interestingly, are never as polite as smokers. Have you noticed that? Smokers always go, "Do you mind if I smoke? Oh, you do? Okay, I'll go outside and have a cigarette.

The Pope is guarded by the Swiss guard who stand proudly in pajamas and silly hats.

America is the new Roman Empire. Remember what happened to Rome.

I saw something in a program on something in Miami, and they were saying, "We've redecorated this building to how it looked over 50 years ago!" And people were going, "No, surely not, no. No one was alive then."

Learning that you have stamina is an excellent thing to know. If a project fails, I know I can pick myself up.

We will now sing forth, hymn 405, 'Oh God, what on earth is my hairdo all about?

Father, bless me for I have sinned, I did an original sinâ?¦ I poked a badger with a spoon.

Two languages in one brain? No one can live at that speed!

Cake and tea or death?

You piss me off you Salmon... You're too expensive in restaurants.

You notice how they always put the fruit and veg at the entrance to the supermarket? You go in thinking 'this is a fresh shop, everything in here is FRESH! I will do well to shop here'. You never go straight to the bit with the toilet paper, loo brushes and such do you? You'd think 'this is a POO shop! Everything in here is themed on POO!

We must have been hunters and gatherers but some of us were just waiters and hopers.

They say that 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people.

It's a historical thing, up to the 19th century the English hated the French. Then in the 20th century the English started to hate the Germans - as we began to move alphabetically through the map of the world. Now, the year 2000, we are fine with the Germans... but the Hungarians are pissing us off.

I don't know what it's like in the U.S. but immigrants in the U.K. do the jobs the citizens won't do.

I wanted to be less well-known in comedy.

No matter how much makeup I wore, people just kept saying "Yes, sir! Would you like tea with that, sir?" "Yes, I would like tea. Why don't you put it on my breasts?" "Certainly. Tea for this man's breasts! Anything else, sir?"

I mean, sometimes... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of acting is to be truthful, and they get that mixed up sometimes, or don't even notice that that's the thing.

Sharks are just evil bastards. I'm quite happy if all the sharks just went, because they eat fish and us. And we need the fish.

You can't land on the moon and say, "Ooh, it's all sticky! It's covered in jam!

"I've done your dog. It's got nine eyes down the side, I made his head all square, 15 legs. What do you think of that?" "Fido looks a bit weird."

You have the American dream! The dream is to be born in a gutter and grow up, and then get all the money in the world and stick it in your ears and go THBBBBBT.

That's no good, I can't steal from the fairly well off and give to the moderately impoverished! That's not gonna swing, is it?

I've wiped the file? .... I've wiped all the files? .... I've wiped the INTERNET? I don't even have a modem!

But the Dutch speak four languages and smoke marijuana.

I'd like to have sex with myself.

Little red cookbook! Little red cookbook!

Peace, peace, peace. Peace is organized.

If I were Achilles I would put my foot in a f**k off block of concrete!

The National Rifle Association says, 'Guns don't kill people. People do'. But I think the gun helps.

Makeup's just crazy, anyways. Native Americans used to wear it, and it did all right for them until, uh ... well, until you killed them all, I suppose.

So then there was the Greek, Socrates, he was great... He invented questioning. Before Socrates, no questioning. Everyone sort of went, ''Yeah, I suppose so.

Well, if you don't have a flag, then you can't have a country. Those are the rules... that I just made up!