When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

Babies don’t need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach… it pisses me off! I’ll go over to a little baby and say ‚What are you doing here? You haven’t worked a day in your life!‘

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke in the world.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

I’ve just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

Whenever I say I made a record in the garage, people just assume that I have, like, a Lear jet parked in there or something. But really there’s old luggage, a couple of bikes. It’s big enough to put one minivan in. That’s it. No dartboard. I’m so not macho.

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.

It’s a funny old world.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

Since childhood, I’ve been a clown. I’ve always liked being very funny or trying to make people laugh. It’s my original self.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head.

From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

Take my wife… Please!

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

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.

My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

For how many things, which for our own sake we should never do, do we perform for the sake of our friends.

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.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

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

We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: ‚Boy, you are skinny, aren’t you?‘ I said: ‚Honey, I’d like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.‘

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

In the end, everything is a gag.

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?

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn’t come here. Well, it can’t hide forever – one day we will overhear it.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

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

I’m very free-spirited.

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

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

When the dog looks at you, the dog is not thinking what kind of a person you are. The dog is not judging you.

At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

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

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

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

Joe Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.

I never played with anything like toys.

A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.

People are underestimating the force of angry kids.

I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.