OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

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.

My preparation is about precision. It is a science.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

People are always asking me in interviews, ‚What do you think of foreign affairs?‘ I just say, ‚I’ve had a few.‘

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‚O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.‘ And God granted it.

If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

If you look at me close enough, there’s a small resemblance to a chicken nugget. I don’t know if it’s my skin texture or my hair, but the resemblance is definitely there.

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’s very interesting, the joke comes first and then the wording comes within five seconds, maybe ten seconds. My thing is to get the joke across in as few words as possible. However, sometimes a word that’s not really needed does help the rhythm of it. It’s a gut feeling.

I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.

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.

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‚Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.‘ He said, ‚Yes, but not in a row.‘

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

Space has always fascinated me. As a young boy looking up at the stars, I found it impossible to resist thinking what was out there and if I ever would experience space first-hand.

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

If at first you don’t succeed… so much for skydiving.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

I’m screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I’m funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that’s appreciated by young people.

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

Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.

The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

Time can behave like another direction in space under extreme conditions.

No matter what engineering field you’re in, you learn the same basic science and mathematics. And then maybe you learn a little bit about how to apply it.

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

It’s a funny thing that when a man hasn’t anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.

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

From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.

I think we all change each other’s paths. I don’t know which law idea that is in physics, but I don’t think any of us can live without affecting one another.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

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

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

We’re a phenomenally snobby society, and it’s such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension, so that’s what makes the middle classes so funny.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

In 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

With the exception of gravitation and radioactivity, all of the phenomena known to physicists and chemists in 1911 have their ultimate explanation in the laws of quantum electrodynamics.