The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

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

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

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

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

I do all my own stunts. I’m kidding.

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.

Marrying an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture.

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

It’s sometimes comical to hear the younger generation ask their peers to repeat themselves.

The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.

The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

MySpace is my wife… Facebook is my mistress.

If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.

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.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

I’ll say things that are serious and put them in a joke form so people can enjoy them. We laugh to keep from crying.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

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.

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

I didn’t start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born – I started getting wicked BO. You know there’s a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO. Like, new dad BO.

We have but one permanent home: heaven – that’s still the old truth that we always have to re-learn – and it’s only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

If I wished to do something, even if I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to make the effort with me, I would go out solo climbing. I did find solo climbing very challenging and a little frightening. You knew that you were completely on your own, and you had to overcome all the problems and possible dangers.

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

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

Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

There was a time when people said, ‚Jim, if you keep on making faces, your face will freeze like that.‘ Now they just say, ‚Pay him!‘

I’m so old, I don’t buy green bananas any more.

It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen.

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

If you seek truth you will not seek victory by dishonorable means, and if you find truth you will become invincible.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

I really believed that fear is contagious.

I’d be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I’d been given. I’d be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

I think it’s funny to be delicate with subjects that are explosive.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

The proper study of mankind is woman.

Racism and sexism, misogyny and homophobia, they’re so visible. They’re out in the open. When they’re visible, it’s a lot easier to deal with them.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

Trash talk? Smack talk? This is an American term that makes me laugh. I simply speak the truth. I’m an Irish man.

Science is but an image of the truth.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.

There are thousands of boys being wasted daily to our country through being left to become characterless, and, therefore, useless wasters, a misery to themselves and an eyesore and a danger to the nation. They could be saved if only the right surroundings or environment were given to them at the receptive time of their lives.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.