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

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

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

I was born. When I was 23 I started telling jokes. Then I started going on television and doing films. That’s still what I am doing. The end.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

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

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

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

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

All those who believe in psychokinesis – raise my hand.

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.‘

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

When I die, I’m gonna leave my body to science fiction.

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

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

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.

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.‘

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

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

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‚President Can’t Swim.‘

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

When I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.

Obama’s not Jesus. He can’t walk on water.

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

My kids are the funniest two human beings there are.

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.

I’m standing behind a wall of jokes. You don’t know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I’m not on the road. There’s this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don’t know anything about me.

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

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

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

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.

I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Homework’s hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, ‚Okay.‘ And then I sit down and they say, ‚It’s math.‘ ‚No! Not math! English, history, anything!‘

I started in action, and then I went to comedy school.

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.

It doesn’t matter what temperature the room is, it’s always room temperature.

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.

If I had to describe myself to an alien I’d say I was bigger than the average human, enjoy a drink or two with a good meal and have a bigger head than most. I’d also say I’m really handsome – especially if they were a female alien.

A lot of critics object to what I do, but I got into comedy to make people laugh, and I’ve always worked hard.

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.

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

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

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.

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

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.

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.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

Almost anything can be funny if said the right way – but it has to be said the right way.

You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‚See if you can blow this out.‘