The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

Don't get it right, just get it written.

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.

We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.

It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!

There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

Discussion in America means dissent.

Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all.

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.

The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.

Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead.

My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.