“Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing.”

Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or ‘stage’ Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.

My lawyer said, “Shouldn’t be a problem. What kind of coverage do you have?” I said, “Fire and theft.” The lawyer frowned. “Uh oh. Wrong kind. Should be fire OR theft.”

Banks have a new image. Now you have ‘a friend,’ your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?

My mother kept the house clean and we ate good.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else’s words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

You know you are getting old when people tell you how good you look.

Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up ‘vaudeville’ in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says ‘Milton Berle’ – and he made it just a tremendous party.

The other day my house caught fire.

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it’s hard to turn away.

You do live longer with bran, but you spend the last fifteen years on the toilet.

I had a sympathetic role in ‘thirtysomething,’ and in two weeks I’m going to do the role again.

One morning, I poured the apple juice into the specimen tube. The nurse held it up and said, ‘It’s a little cloudy.’ I took the tube from her and said, ‘Let me run it through again,’ and drank it. The nurse fainted.

When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.

I made it, Ma – Carnegie Hall. And I didn’t have to practice.

One thing I’ve never said in my whole life is, ‘Let’s have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.’

We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

In doing nothing men learn to do evil.

I asked, “What are words?” The tenzo said, “One, two, three, four, five.” I asked again, “What is practice?” “Nothing in the entire universe is hidden.”

There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.

If you want God’s grace, all you need is need, all you need is nothing. But that kind of spiritual humility is hard to muster.

There’s nothing prettier in the world than a melody. I can get lost in a song with a melody.

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!