Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.

Banks have a new image. Now you have 'a friend,' your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?

You do live longer with bran, but you spend the last fifteen years on the toilet.

Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.

If you want to read about love and marriage, you've got to buy two separate books.

A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!

Age, style, where you come from, where you were born, it's different every time, which, to me, is refreshing because it says that there isn't any one thing, one formula or kind of character that makes a great comedian. Everybody has had a different approach.

And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.

As a parent, I'd - I'd be a better father.

As you get older, as you become more sensitive, feel more, it becomes harder to make jokes. You censor yourself.

Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We're reflections. It's a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that 'I want to convert.' Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: 'Better one of them should die than one of us.'

Ed Sullivan brought me to TV first in 1952, then Garry Moore's program gave me a lot of confidence and freedom.

Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn't know fluffy. Everything sank.

I can't stay friends with anyone who doesn't have a passion for something; and, generally speaking, artistic people, creative people carry it right into the kitchen, too. They have a zest for life; the excitement of living. All of the great eaters I've known are also men of great wit.

I don't mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special.

I had a sympathetic role in 'thirtysomething,' and in two weeks I'm going to do the role again. But in the movies, I just love the heavies. It's much more fun. Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.

I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.

I made it, Ma - Carnegie Hall. And I didn't have to practice.

I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify.

I was a high school throw-out.

I won't eat in a place that has suits of armor.

I'm only... I'm only unhappy when the reviews are bad, but give me a good review and I'm a... I'm just screaming all over the place with joy.

If you keep yourself alive and current, funny is funny.

If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.

It's not easy being a father, but I've been allowed a comeback.

Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.

Let's face it: It's difficult enough to be funny without worrying about what is going to offend whom.

Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up 'vaudeville' in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says 'Milton Berle' - and he made it just a tremendous party.

Modesty is not one of my virtues.

Museums are good things, places to look and absorb and learn.

My brother is the youngest member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I wouldn't let him cut my nails.

My father helped me leave. He said, 'It's all out there, it's not here.'

My father was a dreamer - my hero. He was a smart, tough guy from Poland, a cutter of lady's handbags, an old socialist-unionist who always considered himself a failure. His big line was: 'Don't end up like me.'

My mother kept the house clean and we ate good. I didn't know we were poor until I started giving interviews.

My mother's sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.

My son says I never tell stories about anyone who's living.

My wife is a very attractive woman, and she's always worried about her diet. But she doesn't pay attention to me, and I don't pay attention to her. She's a vegetarian, and it drives me crazy.

One thing I've never said in my whole life is, 'Let's have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.'

Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

Right when I started in show... Milton Berle was my first idol. When I was a kid, I went to see Milton at Lowe's State, and I never laughed so much, and I said, 'That's who I want to be; that's what I want to be.'

Smoked salmon is for dinner. Belly lox is for breakfast. Don't get that mixed up.

That's the great thing about New Year's, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn't such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That's what the trees are all about.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else's words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.

There's a charm, there's a rhythm, there's a soul to Jewish humor. When I first saw Richard Pryor perform, I told him, 'You're doing a Jewish act.'

There's nobody to believe in anymore, nobody to trust.

We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator... Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or 'stage' Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.