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.‘

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

George Carlin’s album, ‚Class Clown,‘ came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I’d come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don’t even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.

I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, ‚What for?‘ I said, ‚I’m going to buy some sugar.‘

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

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

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

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

A lot of truth is said in jest.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it’s my entity; it’s my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

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!

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

You need to understand what works best for your own body.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

I’m honest enough to say I don’t know everything. You know, I don’t. I don’t understand all of God. I don’t understand, you know, some kind of why bad things happen.

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.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

We are all at times unconscious prophets.

I’m very secure about my talents and about who I am.

Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it’s dangerous.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

How do you catch a knuckleball? You wait until it stops rolling, then go pick it up.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

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

Some sarcasm is best told simply.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

People say I look so happy – and I say, ‚That’s the Botox.‘

Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the U.S. Bureau of Wild Life.

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

Teach a parrot the terms ‚supply and demand‘ and you’ve got an economist.