If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

My reputation grows with every failure.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‚Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you are for empowers you.

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

I laugh all the time – at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don’t laugh onstage because then it’s serious business.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

If you deserve it, go get it.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

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

I think the great part about what I do is that there’s a scoreboard. At the end of every week, you know how you did. You know how well you prepared. You know whether you executed your game plan. There’s a tangible score.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

I’m such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you’ll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

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

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

What I like about the jokes, to me it’s a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won’t be funny.

Learn to think continentally.

By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once, and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.

I was never really good at anything except for the ability to learn.

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

Americans never quit.

Never complain and never explain.

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console.