Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.

Almost anything can be funny if said the right way – but it has to be said the right way.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

Stand-up is my baby.

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

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.

I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie… a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.

If I ever had twins, I’d use one for parts.

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

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 won’t belong to any organization that would have me as a member.

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

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, ‚A house guest,‘ you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.

If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

In Beverly Hills… they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

Laughter is America’s most important export.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a quaker.

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

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

The greatest thing about being a comedian is knowing other comedians. And you get to talk to them. Its the most fun.

My husband says I look like a Q-tip.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

I don’t like magic – but I have been known to make guys disappear.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn’t pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

I grew up in a funny way.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

I must have read every issue of ‚Punch‘ published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour – that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like ‚Three Men in a Boat.‘

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.

I should be a postage stamp, because that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked. I’m beautiful. I’m fast. I’m so mean I make medicine sick. I can’t possibly be beat.

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.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

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.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

Never accept a drink from a urologist.