When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.

People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius.

I get paid for what most kids get punished for.

Pity? You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!

I've had great success being a total idiot.

I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.

A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.

When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.

Every man's dream is to be able to sink into the arms of a woman without also falling into her hands.

We're leaving the House to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth... or couldn't get better jobs in the first place.

A lot of people resent that I've been in someone's life for 50 years. Why shouldn't people have an affection for me and what I've done? Didn't I have to be genuine for them to buy into what I did? There are children who grow up today who will not have that when they're 55 years old. With whom will they have it? Name an example for me.

Adrenaline is wonderful. It covers pain. It covers dementia. It covers everything.

Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.

From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you're gonna have problems.

Gambling is part of the human condition. I love it. I have the best time gambling. I've been winning fortunes, and I've been losing them.

I don't want to be remembered. I want the nice words when I can hear them.

I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can't get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That's in friendship, that's a deal, that's a commitment. Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.

I have some very personal feelings about politics, but I don't get into it because I do comedy already.

I need the applause.

I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don't have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.

I tell young comics, 'Do you want this badly enough? It's there. But you have to go get it. And if you think I'm going to give you the key to the lock of that door, there is no key, there is no lock, and there is no door.'

I turned down 'Some Like It Hot.' See how smart I am? I felt I couldn't bring anything funny to it. The outfit was funny. I don't need to compete with the wardrobe.

If I found the cure for dystrophy tomorrow, I would do a telethon in four weeks for acute pain that in this country is a bigger problem than cancer, heart, sickle cell, anemia, name it. It is - it's hitting 70 million Americans.

Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue - nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us.

The young man who's had the Guggenheim fortune behind him all his life - he can hire all the authorities on the subject to teach him how to do a monologue, but he's never going to have the right stuff to pull it off. If he doesn't walk out onstage needing to walk out there, he doesn't have a dream of doing well.

When I hit around 65, 66, I started to feel tremendous worth and incredible personal esteem. I was becoming very cognisant of my contribution to the American spirit of helping your fellow man and all of the good stuff.

When I would be myself, I was being big-headed. I was being egotistical. I was a megalomaniac, when it really was just having not to be a monkey for a few hours a day. And fulfilling the need to be a man.

When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon Daddy will you take me to the zoo He answered If the zoo wants you let them come and get you.

Commercial television has underestimated the intelligence of the public.

I did work out every day. I needed it to have the endurance to do what needed to be done and not get hurt. I have such a new respect for action stars now.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

I don't like to hurt people, I really don't like it at all. But in order to get a red light at the intersection, you sometimes have to have an accident.

When not deeply engaged in creative activities, or numbed out by the TV, I felt empty. My heart hurt. I often felt hollow or as if I were some sort of wispy ghost, barely existing.

I wouldn't like to see a chick of mine taking her clothes off and kissing a fellow on screen. And my girls must get very hurt when they see me doing it.

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.

It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.

Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.

I would never do anything to hurt anybody, especially if they're helping me. I'm not that kind of person.

I mean, I would never want to do anything to hurt my family, but then again I would never want to do anything to hurt myself. And I think they go hand in hand.

Now that we are cool, he said, and regret that we hurt each other, I am not sorry that it happened.

Though bitter, good medicine cures illness. Though it may hurt, loyal criticism will have beneficial effects.

Coming down under a parachute is quite different as well. You hit the ground pretty hard, but all the systems work very well to keep it from hurting, so it doesn't even hurt when you hit. It was a great experience to be able to do both.

You mean guys don't get injured in spring training? Guys get hurt walking down the street.

This week I was proud to join with my colleagues to help pass two important, common-sense pieces of legislation that will limit the frivolous lawsuits by trial attorneys and personal injury lawyers that clog our courts and hurt our small businesses.

I remember seeing Bill Hurt in New York once. I talked to him on the phone around 1988 and that's about it. I was shooting in New York and somebody said Glenn Close came by the set.

I have never been hurt by what I have not said.

When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.

If a university official's letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech crimes before she's given the speech - which then leads to Facebook postings demanding that Ann Coulter be hurt, a massive riot and a police-ordered cancellation of the speech - is not hate speech, then there is no such thing as hate speech.

One of my sensory problems was hearing sensitivity, where certain loud noises, such as a school bell, hurt my ears. It sounded like a dentist drill going through my ears.