Best 125 quotes of Johnny Carson on MyQuotes

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.

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.

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

Americans, too many of them, take themselves too seriously. You're going to get rapped - by the viewers, by the sponsors and by the network brass - if you joke about doctors, lawyers, dentists, scientists, bus drivers, I don't care who. You can't make a joke about Catholics, Negroes, Jews, Italians, politicians, dogs or cats. In fact, politicians, dogs and cats are the most sacred institutions in America.

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

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

As for being sociable, I hate the phoniness in the showbiz world. I know this will be taken wrong, but I don't like clubs and organizations. I was never a joiner.

As long as I don't commit any crimes, you have no right to judge me except by my performance as a professional. On that level, you're welcome to think whatever you want about me.

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.

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

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.

Believe me, you don't walk away from the kind of money you make with a daily television show. You might get awful tired of it sometimes, but take a second look at the check and you get less tired right away.

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties.

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

Democracy is the eagle on the back of a dollar bill, with 13 arrows in one claw, 13 leaves on a branch, 13 tail feathers, and 13 stars over its head - this signifies that when the white man came to this country, it was bad luck for the Indians, bad luck for the trees, bad luck for the wildlife, and lights out for the American eagle.

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

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

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

Despite the fact that computer speeds are measured in nanoseconds and picoseconds - one billionth and one trillionth of a second, respectively - the smallest interval of time known to man is that which occurs in Manhattan between the traffic signal turning green and the taxi driver behind you blowing his horn.

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

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

Entertainment is like any other major industry; it's cold, big business. The business end wants to know one thing: Can you do the job? If you can, you're in, you're made; if you can't, you're out.

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.

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.

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

From the time I was a little kid, I was always shy. Performing was when I was outgoing. So I guess I am a loner. I get claustrophobia if a lot of people are around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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 can't go anywhere without being bugged by somebody. I'd love to just hike out down the street, or drop in a restaurant, or wander in the park, or take my kids somewhere without collecting a trail of people. But I can't.

I can't say I ever wanted to become an entertainer. I already was one, sort of-around the house, at school, doing my magic tricks, throwing my voice and doing Popeye impersonations. People thought I was funny; so I kind of took entertaining for granted It was inevitable that I'd start giving little performances.

I couldn't care less what anybody says about me. I live my life, especially my personal life, strictly for myself... Whatever you do, you're going to be criticized. I feel the one sensible thing you can do is try to live in a way that pleases you.

I don't run with anybody's herd. I don't like crowds. I don't like going to fancy places. I don't like the whole nightclub scene. Cocktail parties drive me mad. So I do my job and I stay away from the rest of it.

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.

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

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

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

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