Johnny Carson Quotes

The good news is that the president gets another chance. The bad news is that he'll be two weeks older.

Ronald Reagan just signed the new tax law. But I think he was in Hollywood too long. He signed it, 'Best wishes, Ronald Reagan.'

Whatever you do, you're going to be criticized.

Democracy is the eagle on the back of a dollar bill, with 13 arrows in one claw, 13 leaves on a branch, 13 tail feathers, and 13 stars over its head - this signifies that when the white man came to this country, it was bad luck for the Indians, bad luck for the trees, bad luck for the wildlife, and lights out for the American eagle.

Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold onto. Usually a mop or a leaf blower.

I don't run with anybody's herd. I don't like crowds. I don't like going to fancy places. I don't like the whole nightclub scene. Cocktail parties drive me mad. So I do my job and I stay away from the rest of it.

Happiness is discovering the prune juice your doctor ordered you to drink has fermented.

Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whiskey, and a dog to eat the rare steak.

My success just evolved from working hard at the business at hand each day.

I have no use for eight houses, 88 cars and 500 suits. I can't eat but one steak at a time. I don't want but one woman. It's silly to have as one's sole object in life just making money, accumulating wealth.

Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: 'Are your ready?'

Americans, too many of them, take themselves too seriously. You're going to get rapped - by the viewers, by the sponsors and by the network brass - if you joke about doctors, lawyers, dentists, scientists, bus drivers, I don't care who. You can't make a joke about Catholics, Negroes, Jews, Italians, politicians, dogs or cats. In fact, politicians, dogs and cats are the most sacred institutions in America.

I'm an entertainer, not a commentator. If you're a comedian your job is to make people laugh.

I work because I enjoy what I'm doing, and the fact that I make money at it - big money - is a fine-and-dandy side fact.

In Hollywood if you don't have a shrink, people think you're crazy.

George Burns has been on my show twenty or thirty times, or maybe more. How can you turn down a guy that age?

I'm an entertainer; I try to give the public what it wants while I'm on the screen, and I'm completely sincere about it. If I don't happen to be a laughing boy off the screen, that doesn't make me a hypocrite or a phony.

I've worked ever since I was a kid with a two-bit kit of magic tricks trying to improve my skills at entertaining whatever public I had - and to make myself ready, whenever the breaks came, to entertain a wider and more demanding public.

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead.

I know a guy who gave up smoking cigarettes, consuming, sex, and wealthy meals.

What's all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?

Adults ask questions as a child does. When you stop wondering, you might as well put your rocker on the front porch and call it a day.

I would like to say, for the record, that I am in favor of using more American Indians and other minorities in motion pictures, I am against polluting the oceans of the world, I am for every nationality having its own homeland, I am against whacking baby seals on the head, and I am for saving the whales.

The Hollywood tradition I like best is called sucking up to the stars.

There's a lot of hypocrisy in audiences. I'd never dream of telling even on a nightclub stage, let alone my show, some of the jokes that are told in a lot of the living rooms from which we get those letters!

A two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry-that's Thanksgiving dinner at Three Mile Island.

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

The difference between divorce and legal separation is that legal separation gives a husband time to hide his money.

Like their parents, kids flock to see James Bond and Derek Flint movies - outrageously antiheroic heroes who break all the taboos, making attractive the very things the kids are told they shouldn't do themselves.

They say atomic rad-i-ation can hurt your reproductive organs. My answer is, so can a hockey stick. But we don't stop building them.

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

I know you've been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvelous. It must be very inexpensive.

It's silly to have as one's sole object in life just making money, accumulating wealth. I work because I enjoy what I'm doing, and the fact that I make money at it - big money - is a fine-and-dandy side fact. Money gives me just one big thing that's really important, and that's the freedom of not having to worry about money. I'm concerned about values - moral, ethical, human values - my own, other people's, the country's, the world's values. Having money now gives me the freedom to worry about the things that really matter.

I'm often asked, "What is your favorite moment during the 30 years you hosted [The Tonight Show]?" I really don't have just one. The times I enjoyed the most were the spontaneous, unplanned segments that just happened, like Ed Ames' infamous "Tomahawk Toss" that produced one of the longest laughs in television history. When these lucky moments happen, you just go with them and enjoy the experience and high of the moment.

Happiness is being stuck in an elevator and discovering the ravishing blonde with you is a liquor salesman with a case of samples.

I never analyze it. Analyzing it would just be a waste of time. I just go out and do it.

I think it's almost immoral to keep on with a marriage that's really bad. It just gets more and more rotten and vindictive and everybody gets more and more hurt. There's not enough honesty about marriage, I think. I wish more people would face the truth about their marital situations.

I think students ought to have the right to protest, but not to the point of anarchy.

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

I'm not one of those who spring up yelling, "Yippee! Another day!" I'll grumble and sulk around a couple of hours, reading newspapers and trying to pick out an idea I might do something with on the show. But I don't really start functioning until noon or later; then about two I go to the studio and the pace begins to quicken.

I can empathize with President [George Bush]. I know what it feels like having a young guy waiting around for you to keel over.

There's only one critic whose opinion I really value, in the final analysis: Johnny Carson. I have never needed any entourage standing around bolstering my ego. I'm secure. I know exactly who and what I am. I don't need to be told. I make no apologies for being the way I am.

I play my life straight - the way I see it. I'm grateful to audiences for watching me and for enjoying what I do - but I'm not one of those who believe that a successful entertainer is made by the public, as is so often said.

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.

Having money gives me the freedom to worry about the things that really matter.

Do you know my dream? I really want to become an aluminum-siding salesman.

I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.

I wouldn't have the slightest interest in running for public office. I'd rather make jokes about politicians than become one of them.