Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I want to know why the government of this country can't take care of the people who are keeping us safe?
When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.
I'm really, basically, nine, and I've always been that. I've never, ever allowed the child within me to die.
You may catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but you'll get them to work harder if you use a flyswatter.
I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have and I never will. I'm an entertainer for 75 years.
I got the 'Max Rose' script, and I fell in love with it. It just hit me. It was something that needed to be made.
Most performers are used to the highs and the lows. If you can let a low stop you, that would be a sad commentary.
The people at Columbia Pictures have been great, but I had to tell them, 'Please don't be nice to me. Just pay me.'
I'm always thinking about future projects and at the same time trying to finish the project you're in the middle off.
(The Nutty Professor) was a labor of love. It was a total film. It was the most productive, creative work of my life.
For a comic to put a public performance in jeopardy for a snickering little laugh - no, no, no, I don't believe in it.
Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.
I believe when you go out there, you have a responsibility to deliver. I have old-fashioned thinking when I'm out there.
I learned from my dad that when you walk in front of an audience, they are the kings and queens, and you're but the jester.
I say to everybody, love is what wakes you up in the morning, love is what makes you walk, and love is what makes you hope.
When you are debilitated, and you're very depressed, and you believe there's no hope, you cannot get a better potpourri of down.
I have nothing against women. As a matter of fact there's something about them that I love, but I just can't put my finger on it.
What's happened at 85 is I've lost my appetite. I used to be a little hog when I was young. But now I really don't seem to need it.
I think the movie industry has to pay attention that we need to make good quality films, or we are never going to get the business back.
If you're an old pro, you know how well you're doing when you're doing it, and your inner government spanks you if you're not doing well.
Gambling is part of the human condition. I love it. I have the best time gambling. I've been winning fortunes, and I've been losing them.
We're leaving the House to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth... or couldn't get better jobs in the first place.
You would not believe some of the scripts I have seen. I have read something like 160 that I've rejected, and I keep them all, for posterity.
When you're 89, dementia develops. I mean, I've told a story onstage, and I'm telling it with a full heart, and I forgot the damn punch line.
The day you're born, you get the pink slip on YOU. Outright ownership. You must only share that life with those that you and only you choose.
When you're doing a different kind of film, you have to bring a different kind of attitude; you have to bring a different kind of concentration.
You see, the people that have a point of view and have an opinion and have some intellect are dangerous in the film community - they're dangerous.
When I was a kid, I said to my father one afternoon, 'Daddy, will you take me to the zoo?' He answered, 'If the zoo wants you, let them come and get you.
There's nothing more dramatic than the comedy I've done. Because the comedy I've done is to get to the audience, get them to feel it, or they won't laugh.
The connection between pathos and broad comedy is very tight. But you do far more work in a comedy scene than you do in a straight scene. It's much harder.
The doc told me I had a dual personality. Then he lays an 82 dollar bill on me, so I give him 41 bucks and say, 'Get the other 41 bucks from the other guy.'
I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don't have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.
I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.
I would not want to do one-episode television - that's just a brief encounter with your audience. The arc takes the actor into an arena where he can really stretch.
Love is what makes you dream, and love is what makes you want to get up in the morning. Love is something that you want to be a part of because it makes you better.
To ask a pratfall comedian, a dishes-in-the-face comic like me, to lay back and bring none of that stuff to the script because it doesn't call for it? That's tough.
I've raised my boys the old-fashioned way, with spankings, sending them upstairs if they misbehave at parties, the works. I believe discipline is the proof of love.
I turned down 'Some Like It Hot.' See how smart I am? I felt I couldn't bring anything funny to it. The outfit was funny. I don't need to compete with the wardrobe.
It'll keep you alive for another 10 years if you get yourself a laugh once a day: either provoke it, or look around in the wildest laboratory in the world, the public.
A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.
Being 90 is not simple, but it's interesting, very interesting. Before I was 90, I could walk, I could see well, I could hear terrific, and now, I can't hear or see or walk.
Most people are embarrassed to admit there's another human being that's in control of them, that your heart beats three times as fast because you've given yourself to someone else.
The greatest thing I can remember in my whole career was the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey clowns asking me to appear with them at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1965.
The beauty of love, as far as I'm concerned, is it makes you better. It makes you stronger. It gives you direction. It gives you understanding of what life is and what we've been given.
My dad was a stickler for teaching me the pratfall. There is something magical about taking a good fall, and when it works, when you get that laugh, there's no better feeling in the world.
You want to know why Barbra Streisand is so difficult? Because she's brilliant. She's a brilliant entertainer, she's a brilliant lady, and she's a wonderful human being, and the community doesn't like it.
People say, "How would you like to be remembered?" I don't want to be remembered. Gimme a break. What I want is to hear what's great about me now. Let me hear it! In the box you don't hear these eulogies.
When I would be myself, I was being big-headed. I was being egotistical. I was a megalomaniac, when it really was just having not to be a monkey for a few hours a day. And fulfilling the need to be a man.
I happen to believe in the human condition so strongly that I don't have to make up games to play with people. Here's what I think: If it's good, let's go for it. If it needs work to be better, let's work on it.
Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.