Johnny Carson

Comedian Quotes V

I’ll start off with two talk show hosts going first. Carson, still is probably the most popular of them all. Cavett was great at what he did… he was funny but most of all he had conversations with his guests rather than interviewing them.

This will be the end of the Comedian Quotes…I thank all of you who have read and enjoyed them…also thanks for all of the suggestions.

Comedian Quotes
Comedian Quotes II
Comedian Quotes III
Comedian Quotes IV

Dick Cavett

I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious. The only problem is that an hour later you’re hungry for power

If your parents never had children, chances are… neither will you

Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself

I don’t see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty – and evaporating quickly

I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests’ books

I don’t feel old. I feel like a young man that has something wrong with him

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself

People will pay more to be entertained than educated

Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do

I hated my last boss. He asked, Why are you two hours late? I said, I fell downstairs. He said, That doesn’t take two hours

Some sad news from Australia… the inventor of the boomerang grenade died today

Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die

May you have the income of a Republican and the sex life of a Democrat!

Bill Burr

God’s everywhere, but I gotta go down (to church) to see him? Really? And he’s mad at me down there, and I owe you money?”

Deny your emotions and act like you have answers

You’re a kid, your whole life is awesome. It’s awesome, right? You had no money, no ID, no cell phone, no nothing, no keys to the house. You just ran outside into the woods. You weren’t scared of nothing. I challenge you to do that as an adult. All your IDs, all your credit cards – just run out of the house with no phone, turn the corner where you can’t see your house, and not have a full on panic attack

I gotta be honest with you. Im kind of jealous of the way my dad gets to talk to my mom sometimes. Where are all those old-school women you can just take your day out on? When did they stop making those angels?

People focus too much on whether there’s a Democrat or a Republican in office. It’s not like this guy Kim-Jong Un got into power the second Trump got into power. It’s not like he wasn’t a problem. It’s not like we haven’t had warmongers. It’s not like corporations haven’t been the main influence on what we’re doing around the world.

I can’t quite remember who I voted for president. It wasn’t Trump or Hillary, though. I didn’t like either one of them

Chris Rock

There are only three things that women need in life: food, water, and compliments.

Every man has to settle down eventually. You know why you gotta settle down eventually? Because you don’t want to be the old guy in the club.

Oprah is rich, Bill Gates is wealthy. If Bill Gates woke up tomorrow with Oprah’s money, he’d jump out a f***ing window and slit his throat on the way down saying, ‘I can’t even put gas in my plane!’

Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost 5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollar, we wouldn’t have any innocent bystanders.

Comedy is the blues for people who can’t sing.

People are always going to, you know, find something wrong with people who are not the exact same as them. That’s just what it is. Black, white, short, tall, religions, whatever. People are bad.

Jim Gaffigan

You wanna know how good bacon is? To improve other food, they wrap it in bacon.”

Whenever you correct someone’s grammar just remember that nobody likes you

There should be a children’s song: ‘If you’re happy and you know it, keep it to yourself and let your dad sleep

Isn’t it strange — when you’re single, all you see is couples, and when you’re part of a couple, all you see are hookers

Babies and toddlers are mostly what I’ve been exposed to at this point. I’m hoping parenting just gets much easier after this. It does, right?

Anyone know if the shuttles to Hell will have Wifi? Asking for a friend

Bob Saget

Beautiful clear day in Beverly Hills. The sweet smell of Botox is in the air.

My confidence wavers between being genuine and being insecure.

I’m going to be fifty this year. Soon I’m going to meet somebody around my own age, and she’s going to be smart and beautiful, and I’m going to date her daughter.

When you’re famous, you’re always famous. It doesn’t go away.
Jon Lovitz. Jon, your act is like masturbation: you’re the only one who enjoys it, and you should be arrested for doing it in public.

My dad’s like, “If your mom and I are having sex and we videotape it and she falls out of bed funny, can I win ten-thousand dollars?”

Steve Allen

Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless

Physical fitness is in. I recently had a physical fit myself

Thousands of years ago only Christ could walk on the water. Today anybody can do it; you just step on the garbage

Civilization itself . . . can easily be swept aside when mob passions are aroused

Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots

In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders

Joey Bishop

The other day I started to take a course in psycho-ceramics. What is psycho-ceramics? It’s the study of crackpots

“Today you can go to a gas station and find the cash register open and the toilets locked. They must think toilet paper is worth more than money.

There are many things that I find attractive about a woman. Foremost to me, of course, would be a sense of humor-but that doesn’t come in a bottle

A woman driver went through a red light. The cop stopped her and said, Lady, didn’t you see that red light? The woman said, You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all

Comedian Quotes IV

Some more comedians this week and next week we will be wrapping this up. Thank you for the suggestions…some will appear next week including my favorite talk show host.

Robin Williams

You know the difference between a tornado and divorce in the South? Nothing! Someone’s losing a trailer, number one

Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs

Cocaine is God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money

Marriage is a triumph of imagination over intelligence

A woman would never make a nuclear bomb. They would never make a weapon that kills, no, no. They’d make a weapon that makes you feel bad for a while

The only reason Mickey Mouse has four fingers is that he can’t pick up a check

Being a famous print journalist is like being the best-dressed woman on the radio

Death is nature’s way of saying, ‘Your table is ready

People say satire is dead. It’s not dead; it’s alive and living in the white house

Robert Klein

In the fifties I had dreams about touching a naked woman and she would turn to bronze or the dream about hot dogs chasing donuts through the Lincoln Tunnel.

And the only studies were – Rodney Dangerfield was my mentor and he was my Yale drama school for comedy.

Fear is the greatest salesman.

In the book of things people more often do wrong than right, investing must certainly top the list, followed closely by wallpapering and eating artichokes

Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.

I learned more at The Second City than I did at Yale for all that high tuition.

Jerry Seinfeld

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

There [are] just two things I’d need to find out everything I want to know about everyone: 1) Let me see them drive; 2) let me hear them talk about marriage … That’s going to tell me exactly your relationship to the world.

The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV

If a book about failures doesn’t sell, is it a success

Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with

What’s the deal with Ovaltine? It comes in a round container, you put it in a round glass, why don’t they call it Roundtine?

Dave Allen

If it’s sent by ship then it’s a cargo, if it’s sent by road then it’s a shipment.

We spend our lives on the run: we get up by the clock, eat and sleep by the clock, get up again, go to work – and then we retire. And what do they give us? A bloody clock.

My church accepts all denominations – fivers, tenners, twenties.

Am I the Irish comedian with half a finger? No, I’m the Irish comedian with nine and a half fingers.

I don’t go out of my way to be outrageous, I just go out of my way to look at things.

Brother Dave Gardner

The South may not always be right, but by God it’s never wrong!

Rock music sounds like an octopus making love to a bagpipe

Let them that don’t want none have memories of not gettin’ any

Love your enemies and drive them nuts

Peter Cook

I have learned from my mistakes, and I am sure I can repeat them exactly

As I looked out into the night sky, across all those infinite stars, it made me realize how insignificant they are.

You realize that suicide’s a criminal offense. In less enlightened times they’d have hung you for it.

Everything I’ve ever told you, including this, is a lie

Dudley Moore

I’m always looking for meaningful one-night stands

Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we’re not poets

When I think of Canada I think of tonic water.

Masturbation is always very safe. You not only control the person you’re with, but you can leave when you want to

The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it

Twister…with help from Johnny Carson

If not for Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor…Twister may not have been part of our culture.

In 1965 Reyn Guyer, of the Reynolds Guyer Agency of Design had been hired to do a promo display for a shoe polish company, and he was tinkering with colored polka dot paper for ideas. He was suddenly hit with inspiration for something much different…a board game where the pieces were people not plastic.

Reyn tested it with office workers who were divided into two teams and the game was called “Pretzel”. He showed it to 3M and they turned the game down.

Reyn took the game to the Milton Bradley Company in Springfield, MA where Mel Taft, the senior vice-president of R & D, chose “Pretzel” as the best of the eight-game ideas. Mel found there was a trademark problem, so he changed the game’s name to Twister, and Milton Bradley began to market Twister in 1966.

Milton Bradley’s competitors started to call the game “SEX IN A BOX” to destroy the game before it was marketed properly.

Milton Bradley discovered that stores were refusing to stock the game so they were going to pull it from the shelves. What they didn’t know was the public relations man they hired had made an arrangement to have the game played on The Tonight Show.

On May 3, 1966, Johnny Carson, the host of the show, was enticed by the “Twister” mat and demonstrated the game along with the beautiful Eva Gabor. That helped the game to say the least. Three million were sold the next year.

Twister was named “The Game of the Year” in 1967.

In 1985 Hasbro acquired the Milton Bradley Company, becoming Twister’s parent company. The Reyn Guyer Creative Group continues to work closely with Hasbro to develop and market new additions to the line of Twister products.

The Game still is being sold today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twister_(game)

The Dick Cavett Show

The Dick Cavett Show on ABC was a smart alternative to the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Cavett frequently booked intellectuals for extended and in-depth conversations

You actually got to really know the guests. He took more than 10 minutes, unlike today…there were no distractions, no busy sets just great conversations.

The knock on Cavett was….snob, name-dropper and controversial guests. All three were correct and I loved it. Yes, he attended Yale and yes he was/is a name dropper…If I got to hang out with people like Groucho Marx I would be a name dropper also… you better believe it. He would book John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and many more. He welcomed the counterculture and Nixon hated him…that is a seal of approval for me.

He would mix and match guests….Janis Joplin, Raquel Welch and Gloria Swanson on the same show…together!

His ABC show in the early 70s was the best out of all of his different shows (PBS, CBS, USA Network). If he had a special rare guest he would only have that one guest for the entire show or sometimes two…

He had Norman Mailer and. Gore Vidal going at it… One show featured Salvador Dalí, Lillian Gish, and Satchel Paige. He took chances and it paid off… Johnny Carson once said that Dick Cavett was the only one that could have given him a serious challenge…but ABC then was a distant 3rd in the network race.

This is not knocking Johnny whatsoever. Johnny’s show is the blueprint of today’s talk shows…Cavett just gave you a smarter show.

Watching the shows now it’s like watching a time capsule. Not everything is topical though. To hear Marlon Brando and Katherine Hepburn who hardly ever did talk shows is very interesting.

It was NOT… hey my name is Miss fill in the blank and my favorite color is blue…bye until next time I need to plug something… You really got to know the person and Dick could usually bring out something interesting. My favorite interview of George Harrison is by Dick. It didn’t look promising at first but George finally warmed up to a very relieved Cavett… this one was right after John and Yoko were guests.

Cavett and the 72 Rolling Stones Tour

Cavett and Woody Allen