People thought I was funny, so I kind of took entertaining for granted... it was inevitable that I'd start giving little performances.
— Johnny Carson
There comes a time or a moment when you know in which direction you're going to go. I know it happened to me when I was quite young.
Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.
People will pay more to be entertained than educated.
The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.
I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.
If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.
My success just evolved from working hard at the business at hand each day.
When turkeys mate they think of swans.
To be an entertainer, you gotta be a little gutsy, a little egotistical, so you have to pull back sometimes when people say, 'Well, he's stuck-up.' 'Stuck-up' is only another word for self-conscious.
I was going to hang it up on the twenty-fifth year of this show. I don't know why. Maybe twenty-five years is enough. And I found out that I was having so much fun doing the show that we decided to stick around for a while.
Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die.
I know you've been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvelous. It must be very inexpensive.
If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.
Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.
For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
We're more effective than birth control pills.
If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.
The mind starts to do things that you didn't even realize it could do. I suppose it's the manipulation. I suppose it's the sense of power, the center of attention, and the me-ism. And performers have to have that.
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.
Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.
Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: 'Are your ready?'
New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.
Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.
I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.
Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.
Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.
