Famous Quotes & Sayings

Yakov Smirnoff

I was this non-threatening funny guy who contrasted the image of the Brezhnevs and the Reagans of the world.

Imelda May

I'm not filthy rich! I'm not as rich as people think. It's funny, isn't it?

Idina Menzel

I would love to play 'Funny Girl' or 'Evita,' but I idolize the women who have played those parts. I don't know if there needs to be another version of those shows.

Ian Frazier

Writing humor for me is more like a watchful-ness. You have to watch. When you say something funny, or someone else does, it's more like you wait for the piece.

Gaines Adams

It's funny, as a little kid, you look up to those guys who you play as in 'Madden,' and now to see myself in the game, it's an honor.

Whoopi Goldberg

I don't have to be bam, bam, bam, funny when I'm working. I can tell stories, and there's some funny in them.

Constance Wu

I do think there are some actors that can get away with trying to be funny, and they're still funny because they're just likeable, and you want to see them. Me, though, when you see me trying to be funny, it's like the worst thing in the world. It's needy, it's cloying, it's manipulative - it's bad.

Don Rickles

If something strikes me as funny, I'll put it in my performance.

Mark Twain

The past may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme

Antoine Rivarol

Generally speaking, there is more wit than talent in the world. Society swarms with witty people who lack talent.

Bill Bryson

I often feel I'm a disappointment to people because they expect me to be the guy in the books. When I sit next to someone at a dinner party I can see they expect me to be quick and witty, and I'm not at all.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Trying to be witty leads to lying, more or less.

Becca Fitzpatrick

He grinned. “Busted. I’m a monster. Jev is my deceptively harmless — and shockingly handsome — alter ego.” “And I’m on top of it,” she announced with witty triumph. “Is that a Freudian slip?” His bluntness caught her off guard. A self-conscious blush rose in her face.

William Shakespeare

Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and fun of invention: taunt him with the licence of ink: if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy shee.

William Shakespeare

I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with-out heresy.

William Shakespeare

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.

Dave Barry

A long memory is the most subversive idea in America. A tautology is a thing which is tautological. A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. If your kids look like you, it's hereditory. If they look like the neighbor, it's the environment. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

Dave Barry

What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up with a terrific-ally witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at parties.

Elaine Stritch

Making clever speeches takes a lot of work and a lot of time.

Antonia Fraser

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

Bertrand Russell

Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.

Bobby Robson

We haven't paid 25 million and 10 million and all the dazzling figures you see being banded about for strikers at the moment. We've been very clever and frugal in our dealings. He's not cheap, he's not for nothing, but we're very happy with the deal.

Christopher Fowler

The queen of crime, Agatha Christie, was always more concerned about the clockwork cleverness of the plot, never the investigator.

Gary Sick

I think in fact the regime, which initially thought they had been very clever in getting him elected ... realize they've got a tiger by the tail. I don't think they're all that pleased about it.

E. F. Schumacher

The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure.

George Bernard Shaw

To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it

Michael Young

Today we frankly recognize that democracy can be no more than aspiration, and have rule not so much by the people as by the cleverest people; not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent.