Wit is educated insolence.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

If you spend your life competing with business men, what do you have? A bank account and ulcers!

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.

Laughter is America’s most important export.

The middle class is so funny, it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension, so that’s what makes the middle classes so funny.

When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him ‚father.‘

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

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

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

I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

My husband says I look like a Q-tip.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen.

I am not gay, but if I were, I would be the first one running out of the closet.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

Even Gaddafi’s adversaries assure us that he stood out for his intelligence as a student; he was expelled from high-school for his anti-monarchic activities. He managed to enroll in another high-school and later graduated in law at the University of Benghazi at the age of 21.

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

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.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

The French complain of everything, and always.

The secret to humor is surprise.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

I was extremely lucky that I had two great wives. It sounds a bit funny to say that, but it’s absolutely true.

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

If I had to describe myself to an alien I’d say I was bigger than the average human, enjoy a drink or two with a good meal and have a bigger head than most. I’d also say I’m really handsome – especially if they were a female alien.

I’m so old, I don’t buy green bananas any more.

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

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

I don’t feel that I’m explaining the world or teaching people anything. And I’m not trying to be a mirror, showing them what’s really going on the world. All I’m trying to do is think of stuff that’s funny, just like when I’m kidding around with my friends.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I like the app where you can make your own memes. I make memes all the time and send them to my friends.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

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

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

I try to be funny and not ignorant.

The brain is wider than the sky.

It’s a funny thing that when a man hasn’t anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it.

I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.