“I've been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.”

“I love to make things happen, I love to see things happen, I love to be a part of things that are happening.”

“I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.”

“There's no such thing as free love. Have you seen the price of Viagra?”

“I think being poor has been good for me. I saw how my mom and dad struggled, and how they could stretch a dollar farther than you could begin to imagine.”

“Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.”

“The world when seen through a little child's eyes, greatly resembles paradise. Happiness is doing with a smile what you have to do anyway. This time, like all time, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.”

“Make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Let the children have their night of fun and laughter... resolved that by our daring, these same children shall not be denied their right to live in a free and decent world.”

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.”

“O! that a man might know The end of this day's business, ere it come; But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known.”

“The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.”

“I've got to tell you, the Internet is a place you go when you want to turn your brain on, and television is a place you go when you want to turn your brain off. I'm not at all convinced that the twain will meet.”

“Programs like 'Jeopardy' and 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire' are ridiculous. They're the stupidest shows in history. They're making us dumber. They don't give us information, they give us facts, factoids. You don't learn who Napoleon was and how he was motivated. You learn what year he was born, and when he died. That's useless.”

“The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.”

“I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.”

“The horn, the horn, the lusty horn Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.”

“I am never merry when I hear sweet music.”