I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

I write all of my own speeches.

Stand-up is hard.

I learned from the guys before me – Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

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.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar.

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

I don’t watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched ‚The King’s Speech‘ on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

I remember the first time I heard a teenager say ‚LOL.‘ Just what? But it means ‚laugh.‘ Why don’t you just laugh? What are you doing?

I enjoy driving on the sim, doing stuff like that, staying at home.

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

I mean, families are weird.

Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.

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

I did stand-up for my grandparents every day when I was, like, eight.

I don’t get bored.

When I was at school, I used to stay on a balcony singing and people would stand around listening.

I got my love of animals from the Dr. Doolittle books and my love of Africa from the Tarzan novels. I remember my mum taking me to the first Tarzan film, which starred Johnny Weissmuller, and bursting into tears. It wasn’t what I had imagined at all.

I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I’d have a hairy conniption. I’d just go crazy.

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

When I was a little boy in school I had to dress up as a bunny and there’s a picture of me with an annoyed face, and when I saw it, I thought I should name myself ‚Bad Bunny.‘

I think that people are interested seeing me on the screen.

I’ve spent too much time giving speeches, traveling the world.

Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

I can remember earning £5,000 a game playing for Hibs at the end of the Seventies. They let me commute from London, train on the Friday and play on Saturday. That lasted until my friends at the Inland Revenue decided to take two-thirds. That wasn’t very entertaining for me.

I do love the films I’ve done in the past. I work hard in my movies and my friends work hard and we’re trying to make people laugh and I’m very proud of that.

I knew early on that I wanted to entertain in some form. And I knew I would work as hard as anyone to do it.

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.

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

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

I would counsel people to go to college, because it’s one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.

Humor is reason gone mad.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I’d get so panicked that I would stutter.

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.

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.

Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.

So when I speak in front of thousands, tens of thousands of people, I don’t really get nervous because I know what I want to say and I know what message I want to give.

Having other comedians complimenting my work is the biggest accolade that I can get.

When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.

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.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

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.

You have a ready wit. Tell me when it’s ready.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

My father was a swim teacher. We used to swim before school, swim after school.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

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.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.