Best 107 quotes of Dick Cavett on MyQuotes

A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books.

A conversation does not have to be scintillating in order to be memorable. I once met a president of the United States, and his second sentence to me was about knees.

A grown man, weeping, is a tough thing to see.

All three of my parents - I also had a stepmother - were teachers, and my dad taught high school, and as he always reminded me when I was going to spend some money on something, 'Your mother and I, in the Depression, had to decide whether to spend a dime on a loaf of bread or if we could go to a movie with it.'

An effective speaker can do more damage or more good in a well-stated minute than an angry klutz could do in half an hour.

Anyone working in the media can tell you that there seems to be an always-ready-to-explode segment of the populace for whom offense is a fate worse than anything imaginable. You'd think offense is one of the most calamitous things that could happen to a human being; right up there with the loss of a limb, or just missing a parking space.

Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed.

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.

Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?'

By the time I was in the fourth grade, I sounded exactly like my father on the phone.

Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself.

Chris Matthews can't start any sentence without 'Let me ask you this... ' And I love Chris Matthews! But almost everybody in journalism does it. Who's stopping you? Just say it!

Comedians are sometimes resentful of their writers. Probably because it's hard for giant egos to admit you need anyone but yourself to be what you are.

Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy's show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen.

Depression - it falls into that small category of things like combat that, if you haven't been in it, you can say you can imagine it all you like. But it's truly different.

Does anything show the complexity of the miraculous brain more than that weird curiosity, the sleep-protection dream?

Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn't ailing.

Every comic can report a few 'gift from the gods' moments.

Every so often, there is an article saying the old kind of talk show isn't possible now. In the oldest kind of talk show, you only had the choice of that or two other channels!

Every student of comedy should see Dame Edna at least twice.

Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous.

Every time someone says, 'You know, we really ought to get together,' if I were really honest, I would ask 'Why?'

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.

Greatly talented performers don't know - often spectacularly - what's best for them, don't know what their talents really are, and don't know what's just plain wrong for them.

History is not reassuring on the subject of the longevity of seemingly lasting great nations, is it?

Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry.

I always wanted to live in a haunted house.

I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants.

I confess, I do have to remind myself almost daily that there are people on this earth capable of reading, writing, eating and dressing themselves who believe their lives are ruled from billions of miles away, by the stars - and, of course, the planets.

I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-'60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn't the night before.

I don't feel old. I feel like a young man that has something wrong with him.

I don't see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty - and evaporating quickly.

I don't think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience's reaction is from another.

I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious. The only problem is that an hour later you're hungry for power.

I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.

If I were running a campaign, I'd urge taking the mountain of money reportedly squandered on pizza, coffee and bagels and spending it more wisely - on a talented young comedy writer.

If (O.J. Simpson) is acquitted, I will renounce my citizenship. And if I converse with him at a cocktail party, I will say, 'Well, there are so many people here who haven't murdered anyone. I think I'll go talk to them.' I'll also riot.

If you have a relative who's lost interest in everything and doesn't get out of bed, who doesn't care for things they used to, can't imagine anything that would give them any pleasure, don't fool around with it; get therapy, get help, get medication if that's right for you, or talk therapy, or something.

If your parents never had children, chances are... neither will you.

I guess the best advice I ever got or anyone could get for doing a talk show, though it has not been easy very often, was from Jack Paar, who said, 'Kid, don't make it an interview. Interviews have clipboards, and you're like David Frost. Make it a conversation.'

I had to fight the intellectual label when I started in television, because, first of all, it's not going to help you commercially, and also, it wasn't particularly true of me. I mean, if anybody thought I was an intellectual, they probably had never really seen one.

I hate Danny Kaye movies.

I have a disturbing problem with losing things. My vulnerability to loss-distress could properly be labeled not only inordinate, but neurotic.

I have a feeling that about 90% of my life has been shaped by my voice, both as an embarrassment and as an advantage. There was always the terrible incongruity of this deep voice barreling out of this little body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that it was ludicrous, that it took on an importance that wasn't really there.

I have a long list of things that make me mad.

I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.

I haven't ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.

I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg.

I know what it feels like to be a gun lover.

I like when the ice gets thin, the going gets rough, the guests get edgy.