"The function of comedy is to dispelunconsciousness..." - Quote by George Bernard Shaw

“In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.”

“Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. . . . It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.”

“I aint such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself.”

“Comedy is acting out optimism.”

“I started over again with an image: Nothing goes right. Then when The Godfather came out, all I heard was, Show respect. With me, you show respect. So I changed the image to I don't get no respect. I tried it out in Greenwich Village. I remember the first joke I told: Even as a kid, I'd play hide and seek and the other kids wouldn't even look for me. The people laughed. After the show, they started saying to me, Me, too - I don't get no respect. I figured, let's try it again.”

“I did an event in Washington, and it was like we lifted a sea.Immediately after [9/11], there was a stunned shock - kind of this feeling of "What do we do now?" I started performing, and there was a catharsis in the laughing. People started to be able to laugh again. Laughter can be many things - sometimes a medicine, sometimes a weapon, depending on.”

“Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.”

“My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separate what seems real from what seems fantastic.”

“From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.”