Johnny Carson Quotes

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

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

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

Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn’t grow up can be vice president.

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

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

There comes a time or a moment when you know in which direction you’re going to go. I know it happened to me when I was quite young.

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

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

To be an entertainer, you gotta be a little gutsy, a little egotistical, so you have to pull back sometimes when people say, ‘Well, he’s stuck-up.’ ‘Stuck-up’ is only another word for self-conscious.

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

We’re more effective than birth control pills.

The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.

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

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

The mind starts to do things that you didn’t even realize it could do. I suppose it’s the manipulation. I suppose it’s the sense of power, the center of attention, and the me-ism. And performers have to have that.

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

People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

I was going to hang it up on the twenty-fifth year of this show. I don’t know why. Maybe twenty-five years is enough. And I found out that I was having so much fun doing the show that we decided to stick around for a while.

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?’

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.

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

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

Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.

When turkeys mate they think of swans.

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

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

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

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

I am one of the lucky people in the world: I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it.

People thought I was funny, so I kind of took entertaining for granted… it was inevitable that I’d start giving little performances.

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

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

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.

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

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