But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

What’s with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

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

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.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m not that bad. I’m certainly not a boy, and it’s been a while since I’ve been a chef.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.

I’m screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I’m funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that’s appreciated by young people.

I don’t write material. Funny things happen to me in the course of a day, and I just make notes.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

I particularly like Twitter, because it’s short and can be very funny and informative. It’s a little bit like having your own radio program.

I’ve got the brain of a four year old. I’ll bet he was glad to be rid of it.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

You look like a talent scout for a cemetery.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

A Jewish woman had two chickens. One got sick, so the woman made chicken soup out of the other one to help the sick one get well.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

When I got outta High School I was driving a truck. I was just a poor boy from Memphis, Memphis.

My favorite time in the cycles of public life is the time when the Pope is dead and they haven’t elected a new one. There’s no one in the world who is infallible for those weeks. And you know, I don’t miss it.

Comedy’s about opening up and being unique, but to a point where the audience can relate to what you’re saying.

Let me just be very clear that the Republican Party will select a nominee that will beat Bill Clinton.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

So, I’m lying on the couch and Laura walks in and I say, ‚Free at last,‘ and she says ‚You’re free all right, you’re free to do the dishes.‘ So I say, ‚You’re talking to the former president, baby,‘ and she said, ‚consider this your new domestic policy agenda.‘

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

If at first you don’t succeed… so much for skydiving.

It’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.

This President is going to lead us out of this recovery.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

I’m a meathead, man. You’ve got smart people, and you’ve got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.

The American people are bigger than any president. I suppose I have faith in my country and in what it is founded on and the values we hold dear.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

This man is frank and earnest with women. In Fresno, he’s Frank and in Chicago he’s Ernest.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

My favourite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman.

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‚Oh no, it’s on the house.‘

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

There are some members of the House leadership whose only mission in life is to demonize the president.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

And frankly, I don’t understand – I mean, I’m obviously a card-carrying Democrat – but I can’t understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney.

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 take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.

There’s always an element of self delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There’s an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

Since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‚What have you done?‘

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.