The good news is that the president gets another chance. The bad news is that he'll be two weeks older.
Johnny CarsonRonald Reagan just signed the new tax law. But I think he was in Hollywood too long. He signed it, 'Best wishes, Ronald Reagan.'
Johnny CarsonDemocracy 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.
Johnny CarsonDemocracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold onto. Usually a mop or a leaf blower.
Johnny CarsonI 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.
Johnny CarsonHappiness is discovering the prune juice your doctor ordered you to drink has fermented.
Johnny CarsonHappiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whiskey, and a dog to eat the rare steak.
Johnny CarsonI 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.
Johnny CarsonTalent 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?'
Johnny CarsonAmericans, 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.
Johnny CarsonI'm an entertainer, not a commentator. If you're a comedian your job is to make people laugh.
Johnny CarsonI 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.
Johnny CarsonGeorge Burns has been on my show twenty or thirty times, or maybe more. How can you turn down a guy that age?
Johnny CarsonI'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.
Johnny CarsonI'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.
Johnny CarsonDemocracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead.
Johnny CarsonWhat's all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?
Johnny CarsonAdults 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.
Johnny CarsonI 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.
Johnny CarsonThere'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!
Johnny CarsonA two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry-that's Thanksgiving dinner at Three Mile Island.
Johnny CarsonThe difference between divorce and legal separation is that legal separation gives a husband time to hide his money.
Johnny CarsonLike 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.
Johnny CarsonThey 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.
Johnny CarsonI know you've been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvelous. It must be very inexpensive.
Johnny CarsonIt'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.
Johnny CarsonI'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.
Johnny CarsonHappiness is being stuck in an elevator and discovering the ravishing blonde with you is a liquor salesman with a case of samples.
Johnny CarsonI never analyze it. Analyzing it would just be a waste of time. I just go out and do it.
Johnny CarsonI 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.
Johnny CarsonI'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.
Johnny CarsonI can empathize with President [George Bush]. I know what it feels like having a young guy waiting around for you to keel over.
Johnny CarsonThere'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.
Johnny CarsonI 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.
Johnny Carson