There is only what is and that's it. What should be is a dirty lie.

What you end up with is outrageousness without the laugh - comedy as electro shock therapy.

You can't just run out and start the car until some cat invents a car.

If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone.

The crooks downtown figured out that comedy is like a hammer. It can put up a barn and it can knock down a wall. So they bought it outright and marketed it as Comedy Central.

It's always good to take something that's happened in your life and make something of it comedically.

All of us black comedians are trying to be mainstream, but you don't want to lose the edge.

I am a comedian and you guys know whatever I say, I don't mean any of it.

I love music. I've always wanted to do music, even when I started out as a comedian.

"Comedy has to be done en clair. You can’t blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear."

"Ronnie Barker will be numbered amongst a select band of comedy greats who shaped British comedy in the 20th century."

"We have lost a giant of comedy. Ronnie Barker will be numbered amongst a select band of greats who shaped British comedy in the twentieth century."

"Seth Meyers is highly overrated as a comedian."

"Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads."

""People "run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water."

"Be not affronted at a joke. If one throw salt at thee, thou wilt receive no harm, unless thou art raw."

"The biggest fool in the world is he who merely does his work supremely well, without attending to appearance."

"Back before I injured my hip, I thought going to the gym was for wimps."

"I was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn't have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, 'Well, that's for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.'"

"I'm really not that funny in real life! But I am the best audience one could find. I love to laugh."

"My favourite comedian, of course, is Tim Conway. He has a way about him - being that belly-laugh kind of funny, and he has the improvisational skills, too. I've never seen anybody better."

"I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy."

"Funny is funny. I dare anyone to look at Tim Conway and Harvey Korman doing the dentist sketch, which is more than 40 years old, and not scream with laughter."

"As far as sitcoms go, I thought Jenna Elfman in 'Dharma and Greg' was a wonderful physical comedienne who had great timing."