Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

An onion can make people cry but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

I mean, families are weird.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

I’m half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I’d be in a hell of a mess!

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?

I should be a postage stamp, because that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked. I’m beautiful. I’m fast. I’m so mean I make medicine sick. I can’t possibly be beat.

I’m so old, I don’t buy green bananas any more.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

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

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‚Where’s the self-help section?‘ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

In 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

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.‘

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.

I’m not an analyzer. I’ve got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don’t analyze people.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

I met Woz when I was 13, at a friend’s garage. He was about 18. He was, like, the first person I met who knew more electronics than I did at that point. We became good friends, because we shared an interest in computers and we had a sense of humor. We pulled all kinds of pranks together.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.