Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, ‚A house guest,‘ you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

I had my first baby at twenty-one.

Some sarcasm is best told simply.

When you’re coming up with new material, it’s not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it’s working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You’re constantly rebuilding.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.

I worry about all who are impure in their thoughts, feelings, or actions or who demean their wives or children, thereby cutting off priesthood power.

The moment you have a child, in an instant your life is not for you, and your life is completely, 100 percent dedicated to another human being, and they will always come first. It changes you forever. It changes your perspective, and it gives you a nice purpose and focus.

I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.

In Hollywood, brides keep the bouquets and throw away the groom.

I consider the fact that thousands of children die each day from starvation and a lack of medicine a crisis for humanity and a problem we must collectively attempt to solve.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

Me and my dad are friends. We’re cool. I’ll never be disappointed again, because I don’t expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that’s how we get along.

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

My three children have brought me great joy.

The loss of a child is my greatest nightmare.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

Laughter is America’s most important export.

We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: ‚Boy, you are skinny, aren’t you?‘ I said: ‚Honey, I’d like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.‘

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

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

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.

For me, it’s a purity thing about the joke itself. It’s a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that’s a legitimate item you have there. For me, it’s nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It’s just not what I’m in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.

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.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

It’s funny; recently I’ve started to notice people’s impersonations of me, and it’s basically like a hyperactive child.

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

You know, nothing is more important than education, because nowhere are our stakes higher; our future depends on the quality of education of our children today.

I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.

I don’t let a lot of reporters meet my children.

I don’t get up, get dressed, go out, and think, ‚Okay, I gotta find eight jokes.‘

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.

I try to be funny and not ignorant.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

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

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

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

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‚A-hem!‘ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

I see children, all children, as humanity’s most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.

My mother is from another time – the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that’s what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know if I wasn’t her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it.

When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.

I understand the importance of bondage between parent and child.

My husband and I had to raise five of my younger brothers and sisters. They lived with us. We sent them to school.

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they’re gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you’re going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.