Robert Klein Quotes

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.

According to one account of the New York City schools during the 1950s: The teacher could not technically hit the child, but the old crones found ways of skirting the rules. The push-probe-pull method was popular, in which the teacher would not hit you, but would poke you with her gnarled, witch-like fingers and grab your face like a taffy pull until you screamed. ... The pull-and-choke was also a favorite. It was executed by pulling the compulsory necktie up like a noose, until the errant boy's face turned the school colors.

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

The `50s were terrifying with nuclear bomb stuff but boring in a social way and then the `60s were happening, and remember, there was no AIDS.

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.

Fear is the greatest salesman.

I have no statistics to prove it, but I'm sure the American workplace will be adversely affected on Monday, the day after XXIV. The game will be the focus of conversation, and distractions happy and sad will be the order of the day, not to mention millions of hangovers. I wouldn't buy a toaster or a parachute manufactured the day after Super Bowl XXIV. You cannot engender such torrid anticipation for an event so great that it requires Roman numerals as a suffix, then expect there to be no social repercussions at its end.

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

I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse.

But I think the other is a little more like bullfighting, a little more daring and although I appreciate good acting and I liked being versatile my whole career, it kept me working.

I'd walk into the school, smell that institutional smell of the tomato soup, peanut butter, disinfectant, and boys room. Pass the lunchroom, see the familiar lunchroom lady with the white dress and net on her hair. At the end of 50 years of distinguished service the Board of Education gives her a bronze net - with her name on it. It stems from the Board of Education rule to keep her hair out of the food.

I was in the De Witt Clinton Hight School marching band. One of the worst bands ever formed. When we played the national anthem, people from every country stood - except Americans.

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

My son has been a class clown and it sort of ran in the family.

[T]he Super Bowl, the quintessential American creation. A dizzying mélange of brilliant entrepreneurship in an atmosphere of intense competition. It is the perfect show for the most intensely competitive culture in this solar system.