Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

I tell you the groans of the damned in hell are the deep bass of the universal anthem of praise that shall ascend to the throne of my God for ever and ever.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

It is wonderful to have someone praise you, to be desired.

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

So many guys are so conservative with their hair, and I always joke with all my buddies when they mess with me, and I’ll say, ‚That’s right, keep the same haircut for ten years.‘ How fun is that?

That’s the one for my tombstone… Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?

Politics is applesauce.

Why can’t I just eat my waffle?

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

I laugh and joke, but I don’t get distracted very easily.

When you focus on how wonderful God is and all the great things He’s done… is doing… and even will do in your life, your natural response will be praise, adoration and awe. Don’t let yourself ever get used to it… stay amazed!

Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what it means.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

I heard that when Christina Aguilera went back to her prom, people, like, booed her. I can’t imagine going through that. If you know that’s going to happen, why put yourself in that situation? I’d rather play for 20,000 screaming people, you know?

Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

In whatever adulation you get, there’s truth and there’s not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible – there’s truth and there’s not truth. It’s human nature to like to read the adulation more.

I won’t belong to any organization that would have me as a member.

A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

Since the very beginning, Emeril’s had a sense of humor about me calling him names and poking fun at him.

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

I was always making my friends laugh, but I never wanted the attention of the whole classroom.

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I’m joking and when I’m serious.

Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, ‚Children’s Letters to God.‘ You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, ‚Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.‘

I am not gay, but if I were, I would be the first one running out of the closet.

And, honestly, if somebody wants to criticize me for not being a trainwreck, that’s fine with me!

In England, when an athlete gets to the top, we do our best to destroy him.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

I tend not to like an awful lot of what is going out under my name now because it is just all product. Who needs it?

Don’t be getting sloppy drunk and telling them dirty jokes.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.