Fred Allen

"To be kind is to be strong."

"The real public is always much better than the imagined public."

"All that we accomplish is due to the quality of our thoughts."

"Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices."

"I'd rather spend one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone."

"Advertising is legalized lying."

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

"The secret of American success is hard work and the other secret is hard work."

"A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, and to no one's advantage but his own."

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."

"I don't have to talk to you like that. I got lawyers."

"The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones."

"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs."

"What happened? Did you make a wisecrack and your throat closed up?"

"The art of oratory is the art of making deep noises from the chest sound like important messages from the brain."

"I told my doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places."

"The best time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water."

"It is easy to have principles when you're rich."

"You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and an agent's heart."

"I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than any man living."

"The Greeks invented logic but the Cretans invented the meeting."

"The secret of my success is that I bit off more than I could chew and chewed as fast as I could."

"Do not be afraid to say what you know, and do not be ashamed to learn what you do not know."

"Comedy is like music. Timing is everything."

"I love to walk down the street and have people say, 'There goes Fred Allen.'"

"The radio and its world were in me like love and music."

"I think a man deserves to be treated with respect until he shows himself to be worthy of something else."

"A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done."

"Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't say in conversation and never say anything in conversation that you wouldn't say in writing."

"I used to play it safe in life; do what people expected of me. But one day I realized something: life is about playing your own game."