Johnny Carson Quotes

People are brought up to think, "It's nice to be modest. It's nice to hide your light under a bushel." Well, bullshit! I've never bought that. In my business, the only thing you've really got is your talent; it's the only thing you have to sell.

Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?

Everybody I meet in public seems to want to audition for me. If I ask a guy what time it is, he'll sing it to me.

The closest thing to Roseanne Barr's singing the national anthem was my cat being neutered.

The vast majority of us don't want to face the fact that we're in the middle of a sweeping social revolution. In sex. In spiritual values. In opposition to wars no one wants. In opposition to government big-brotherhood. In civil rights. In basic human goals. They're all facets of a general upheaval.

Never ask your wife if she still hears from her old pimp.

That would have been a great ticket, Reagan and Ford - an actor and a stuntman.

I get sick of that old rationalization, "We're staying together because of the children." Kids couldn't be more miserable living with parents who can't stand each other. They're far better off if there's an honest, clean divorce.

It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, "if you want it your way, cook it yourself".

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

Who cares what entertainers on the air think about international affairs? Who would want to hear me about Vietnam? They can hear all they want from people with reason to be respected as knowledgeable.

Never marry a girl named 'Marie' who used to be known as 'Murray'.

I don't think it's you that changes with success - it's the people around you who change. Because of your new status, they change in relation to you.

Talking about sexual morality, I wouldn't agree that it's declining, but it's certainly changing. Young and old, we are very much in the process of taking a fresh look at the whole issue of morality. The only decline that's taking place - and it's about time - is in the old puritanical concept that sex is equated with sin.

I am taking the applause sign home, putting it in the bedroom.

I see a lot of new faces. Especially on the old faces.

When turkeys mate they think of swans.

Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.

If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.

Happiness is seeing your son drafted the same day he's been accepted to an expensive college.

Only lie about the future.

There are very few Japanese Jews. As a result, there is no Japanese word for Alan King.

For days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.

You become successful, the way I see it, only if you're good enough to deliver what the public enjoys. If you're not, you won't have any audience; so the performer really has more to do with his success than the public does.

People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

It's the lack of this kind of open and honest education about sex that causes so many kids to grow up with sexual hang-ups.

I owe one thing to my public - the best performance I can give.

When a comic becomes enamored with his own views and foists them off on the public in a polemic way, he loses not only his sense of humor but his value as a humorist.

Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.

Happiness is being served with a paternity suit on your 75th birthday.

The best way to thaw a frozen turkey? Blow in it's ear.

If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.

How much of the national news that you report to the public each night consists of information you've actually gone out and dug up on your own?

Happiness is.....finding two olives in your martini when youre hungry.

If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace.

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties.

As long as I don't commit any crimes, you have no right to judge me except by my performance as a professional. On that level, you're welcome to think whatever you want about me.

Maybe we should hold the next [Olympic] games in Afghanistan and hope the Soviets pull out of that one too.

I feel the one sensible thing you can do is try to live in a way that pleases you. If you don't hurt anybody else, what you do is your own business.

When the public starts classifying you as thoughtful, someone given to serious issues, you find yourself declassified as a humorist.

There's a big difference between being a loner and being lonely. I'm far from lonely. My day is full of things I enjoy, starting with my show. Any time my work is going well and I have a relationship with a woman that's pretty solid, that does it for me.

Pittsburgh is kind of like Newark without the cultural advantages.

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