There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

‚Kitchen Confidential‘ wasn’t a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.

Some sarcasm is best told simply.

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

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

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

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

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

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

I’ve been doing comedy longer than I haven’t been doing comedy, as I was performing for three years before I even got on ‚The Tonight Show.‘ There’s truly nothing like it; it’s intense and exhilarating, even though it looks so casual.

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war – for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more.

The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.

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

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

People don’t want drama 365 days a year. I’m a sense of relief; it’s my job to take your mind off what’s bad for that brief second you’re in the room with me, regardless of shape, race, colour or anything. It brings people together, and it makes me feel good about what I’m doing.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

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.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I’m not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

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

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

It’s always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you’re seeing the most beautiful thing on God’s Earth.

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

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.

The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.

If humans were totally unstructured creatures, they would be… a tool which can properly be shaped by outside forces.

Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what it means.

I’ve got a great sense of humor.

If you tell me there’s something I can’t do, I’ll want to do it even more. Especially when it comes to entertaining.

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

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

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

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.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Humor is reason gone mad.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie… a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

I know that if I had a television in my flat I would convince myself that everything on it was really interesting. I would say, ‚I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here!‘ is so sociologically fascinating that I think I’d better watch.

Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.

I love nerdy, cute, quirky boys who don’t take themselves too seriously.

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they’re eating sandwiches.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

I grew up in a funny way.

WWE is a space where I thrived, and I loved, and I still do. I love connecting with an audience; that is the greatest thing about going back to WWE.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

Chris Rock does the political thing really well, but that never worked for me.

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.