ask monks whether they have had thoughts on the absence of parenthesis in Python

Parentheses are commonly used in Python and (unlike Perl) required when making function calls.

Perl seems to encourage the condensing of complex code to one-liners

As indicated in the "Which is the Most Popular Golfing Language?" section in this node, code golf is more popular in Python than Perl.

- which is great if you have written the code yourself, but difficult for others to read

Russian is difficult to read if you don't know Russian. Far more important than "readability" is "maintainability" - as described in more detail here.

Update: BTW, see also Re^7: Curious about Perl's strengths in 2018 which contains a few quotes from Larry about Python (this whole long thread contains lots of interesting comparisons of programming languages). You can also find a long list of PM nodes comparing programming languages at Re: Honest question about Perl, Python and Ruby (Comparing Programming Languages References).