I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him ‚father.‘

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

God and I have a great relationship, but we both see other people.

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

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

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

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.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

I like quips. I like whiffs of cynicism and I think they can be witty. But I don’t really know where wittiness is constructive.

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

She’s been married so many times she has rice marks on her face.

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

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.

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.

As an athlete, you’d better laugh at yourself when you slip in the mud.

Laughter is America’s most important export.

In the end, everything is a gag.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

Jerry Ford is so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.

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

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously.

We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people 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.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

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

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

I don’t feel that I’m explaining the world or teaching people anything. And I’m not trying to be a mirror, showing them what’s really going on the world. All I’m trying to do is think of stuff that’s funny, just like when I’m kidding around with my friends.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

You look like a talent scout for a cemetery.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains.

If you spend your life competing with business men, what do you have? A bank account and ulcers!

Why don’t Jews drink? It interferes with their suffering.

Why can’t I just eat my waffle?

I had some eyeglasses. I was walking down the street when suddenly the prescription ran out.

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.

You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

Politics is applesauce.

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it’s not so much a good joke anymore. ‚Everybody’s from Scranton; no one’s in Scranton.‘

I hate to be smart.

My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a quaker.

I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

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