To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

I want parents to teach that academic intelligence is essential, but so is financial intelligence.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

I had my first baby at twenty-one.

I don’t think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

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

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.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

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

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

What I like about the jokes, to me it’s a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won’t be funny.

The childcare tax credit makes some sense.

From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.

God and I have a great relationship, but we both see other people.

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

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

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

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.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the U.S. Bureau of Wild Life.

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

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.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It’s truly ridiculous.

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

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

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Just got back from a pleasure trip: I took my mother-in-law to the airport.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

She’s been married so many times she has rice marks on her face.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

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

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

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

Men are what their mothers made them.

You know what, I’m very attracted to someone who makes me laugh and is that charming. Really, I could be charmed by anyone. I’m just a sucker for somebody that is charming.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

When your mother asks, ‚Do you want a piece of advice?‘ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.

As a father and now a grandfather to three wonderful grandchildren, I know how magical the first year of a child’s life is but also how much hard work it takes. Being able to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones is absolutely vital, especially early on.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with Guess on it. I said, Thyroid problem?

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‚Present‘ or ‚Not guilty.‘

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.