When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

Money is a strange business. People who haven’t got it aim it strongly. People who have are full of troubles.

That’s the one for my tombstone… Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don’t notice they’re getting made fun of. So they’ll say something back that’s not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.

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

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

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

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Why don’t Jews drink? It interferes with their suffering.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

If you look at anyone who has achieved great success and wealth, people like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, or Lance Armstrong, they have all focused intensely in order to win.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

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

I hate to be smart.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Money ain’t everything.

A grown man should always carry cash, right? I don’t know who told me, but someone told me that a long time ago, and the biggest turnoff is when a guy doesn’t have cash on him.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

I absolutely believed when I was young because the Tooth Fairy was always good to me. The Tooth Fairy generally left me a dollar or two dollars and, as a kid, that was a lot of money.

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.

Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and… the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

A great mind becomes a great fortune.

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.

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.

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

I just hate meetings. Though it’s true that once you’ve made a lot of money, people around you might be full of ideas about ways to make lots more money and might be disappointed that you don’t want to seize every opportunity to do so.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

Some of these Ivy League kids want to have it both ways. They want to be baby members of the 1 percent, which they most certainly are, and yet still portray themselves as the oppressed.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

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

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

There is no wealth but life.

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

We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.

Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.

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.

For people who live in the suburbs and must commute long distances to work, their wealth will sink as energy prices rise.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.