When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

If I’d just tried for them dinky singles I could’ve batted around .600.

I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

It’s nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren’t the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

In the end, everything is a gag.

A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.

You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

I calculate that I took 20,000 punches, but I earned millions and kept a lot of it. I may talk slow, but my mind is OK.

Dreaming about being an actress, is more exciting then being one.

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

Let the path be open to talent.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

Irrespective of whether you have talent or not, one has to work hard. Just being talented doesn’t mean anything; you can end up wasting it before you realize.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

When I was 8 years old, I saw ‚Raiders of the Lost Ark‘ in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.

Often people become our friend or follower with an undercurrent of resentment in our having more success than they have. They secretly desire the opportunity to take us down a notch; they have a nose for any misstep on our part they can exploit.

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.

I don’t see how people are comfortable with seeing other people be great. You can be happy for anybody, but what is your excuse to not want to be great? These people are great because they just say, ‚I’ma do that,‘ and they do it. That’s it. There’s no scientifical process.

The worst part of success is, to me, adapting to it. It’s scary.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.

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

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

The problem with me, as far as getting married and having a family, is that my comedy is so important to me. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good a dad as my dad.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Winning takes precedence over all. There’s no gray area. No almosts.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money… they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.

At the end of the day, I want to be part of the same conversation as Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.

I don’t like begging money from producers.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

There are people out there who hate me and who say I’m arrogant, vain, and whatever. That’s all part of my success. I am made to be the best.