Johnny Carson quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Johnny Carson

Johnny Carson Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Johnny Carson on Wise Famous Quotes.

Never marry a girl named 'Marie' who used to be known as 'Murray'.

Happiness is seeing the muscular lifeguard all the girls were admiring leave the beach hand in hand with another muscular lifeguard.

Happiness is being served with a paternity suit on your 75th birthday.

For 3 days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but the phone calls taper off.

Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.

I know a guy who gave up smoking cigarettes, consuming, sex, and wealthy meals.

Happiness is sitting down to watch some slides of your neighbor's vacation and finding out that he spent two weeks in a nudist colony.

When the public starts classifying you as thoughtful, someone given to serious issues, you find yourself declassified as a humorist.

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.

I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.

People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

I owe one thing to my public - the best performance I can give.

Having money gives me the freedom to worry about the things that really matter.

Your chances of getting hit by lighting go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say Storms suck!!

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead.

Happiness is a tiger in your tank and a pussycat in your back seat.

I am taking the applause sign home, putting it in the bedroom.

I can empathize with President [George Bush]. I know what it feels like having a young guy waiting around for you to keel over.

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself.

If God didn't want man to hunt, He wouldn't have given us plaid shirts.

We're more effective than birth control pills.

Audiences have proved time and again that they don't want a steady diet of any entertainer airing his social views - especially if he's a comedian.

The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.

Do you know my dream? I really want to become an aluminum-siding salesman.

The good news is that the president gets another chance. The bad news is that he'll be two weeks older.

Air Canada. That's a good name for a Canadian airline.

Asked how he became a star, Mr. Carson once replied, I started in a gaseous state and then I cooled.

Adults ask questions as a child does. When you stop wondering, you might as well put your rocker on the front porch and call it a day.

Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die.

Happiness is ... finding two olives in your martini when youre hungry.

Only lie about the future.

The Hollywood tradition I like best is called sucking up to the stars.

I hated my last boss. He asked, Why are you two hours late? I said, I fell downstairs. He said, That doesn't take two hours.

I have an ego like anybody else, but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time.

I work because I enjoy what I'm doing, and the fact that I make money at it - big money - is a fine-and-dandy side fact.

We resort, frankly, to pies, which is a comedy staple that's gone back, I guess, to since the first pie was ever baked.

We have two kinds of air: regular and chunky style.

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.

Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.

The difference between divorce and legal separation is that legal separation gives a husband time to hide his money.

I know you've been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvelous. It must be very inexpensive.

Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?

Everybody I meet in public seems to want to audition for me. If I ask a guy what time it is, he'll sing it to me.

I hear that whenever someone in the White House tells a lie, Nixon gets a royalty.

The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.

It's the lack of this kind of open and honest education about sex that causes so many kids to grow up with sexual hang-ups.

As you all know by now, this is the 51st annual Academy Awards. Two hours of sparkling entertainment spread out over a four-hour show.

Ronald Reagan just signed the new tax law. But I think he was in Hollywood too long. He signed it, 'Best wishes, Ronald Reagan.'

How much of the national news that you report to the public each night consists of information you've actually gone out and dug up on your own?

Never ask your wife if she still hears from her old pimp.

Find me any performer anywhere who isn't egocentric. You'd better believe you're good, or you've got no business being out there.

George Burns has been on my show twenty or thirty times, or maybe more. How can you turn down a guy that age?

Just be yourself -- it's the only way it can work.

Nancy Reagan fell down and broke her hair.

Happiness is discovering the prune juice your doctor ordered you to drink has fermented.

Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whiskey, and a dog to eat the rare steak.

In Hollywood if you don't have a shrink, people think you're crazy.

If life was fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators dead.

A two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry-that's Thanksgiving dinner at Three Mile Island.

Last night, it was so cold, the flashers in New York were only describing themselves.

I wouldn't have the slightest interest in running for public office. I'd rather make jokes about politicians than become one of them.

An oxymoron? What's that? A moron who studies at Oxford?

Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold onto. Usually a mop or a leaf blower.

I never analyze it. Analyzing it would just be a waste of time. I just go out and do it.

Desire! That's the one secret of every man's career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire.

Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.

Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.

I am one of the lucky people in the world; I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it.

Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.

He's so fat, he can be his own running mate.

I demand my right to a private life, just as I respect that right for everybody else.

Money gives me just one big thing that's really important, and that's the freedom of not having to worry about money.

That would have been a great ticket, Reagan and Ford - an actor and a stuntman.

If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace.

Happiness is seeing your son drafted the same day he's been accepted to an expensive college.

Pittsburgh is kind of like Newark without the cultural advantages.

They say atomic rad-i-ation can hurt your reproductive organs. My answer is, so can a hockey stick. But we don't stop building them.

It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, "if you want it your way, cook it yourself."

Democracy means free television, not good television, but free.

The closest thing to Roseanne Barr's singing the national anthem was my cat being neutered.

The best way to thaw a frozen turkey? Blow in it's ear.

I think students ought to have the right to protest, but not to the point of anarchy.

My success just evolved from working hard at the business at hand each day.

I see a lot of new faces. Especially on the old faces.

Happiness is being stuck in an elevator and discovering the ravishing blonde with you is a liquor salesman with a case of samples.

If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.

Whatever you do, you're going to be criticized.

Maybe we should hold the next [Olympic] games in Afghanistan and hope the Soviets pull out of that one too.

There are very few Japanese Jews. As a result, there is no Japanese word for Alan King.

May you have the income of a Republican and the sex life of a Democrat!

I feel the one sensible thing you can do is try to live in a way that pleases you. If you don't hurt anybody else, what you do is your own business.

According to statistics, it's a lot easier to get hit by lightning than to win a Lotto jackpot. The good side: you don't hear from your relatives.

I don't think it's you that changes with success - it's the people around you who change. Because of your new status, they change in relation to you.

When turkeys mate they think of swans.

People pay more to be entertained that educated

I heard from my cat's lawyer today; my cat wants $12,000 a week for Tender Vittles.

The only issue cash presents you is the independence of not stressing about funds.

If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.

What's all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?

If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.