“I agree that there are some bad apples on Wall Street. I spent about ten years exposing corporate and financial fraud for ‘Barron’s’ magazine and I found a lot to write about.”

I think, there are many people who are much smarter than I am, and many, many, many who are much harder-working than I am, but in terms of the range of my activities, they’re unique.

I’m an economist by training. I don’t really work as an economist. I only worked briefly as an economist.

That was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science – in my opinion, this is just an opinion – that’s where science leads you.

I am scared of getting old. I am scared of being ill.

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over gain, and you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.

Sleep more at night. If it’s allowed at work or home, take a nap in the afternoon. You’ll be amazed at how much better you’ll feel.

I’m not a Mensa member. I have no idea where that rumor came from. I never have been, and I doubt if I ever will be.

I think Darwinism as a theory explaining evolution within species is incredibly brilliant – just unbelievably, incredibly brilliant.

Evolutionism as taught by Darwinism has nothing to say about how life originated. Has nothing to say about how the governing principles in the universe, gravity, thermodynamics, motion, how those originated. It’s got some gigantic missing pieces.

I have always been very diversified, so I have never suffered a catastrophic loss. I spread my money around the way a large institutional investor does. I use different brokerage firms. I manage some of my accounts myself.

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.

I’d say the main way people get into terrible financial trouble is just to spend too much money relative to their income, and that is an endemic problem in the United States of America, and that’s the kind of thing that should be taught about in schools.

I always assumed scientists were free to ask any question, pursue any line of inquiry without fear or reprisal.

When I seemed to be irritable or sad, my father would quote the learned Dr. Knight, and then say, ‘Just go to sleep.’ Like all smart aleck kids, I thought the advice was silly. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve realized just how smart Knight was.

I am so in love with just lying in bed listening to Mozart.

We are not supposed to be all equal. Let’s just forget that. We are supposed to have equal rights under law. If we do that, we have done enough.

I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said ‘that’s clever it’s an anagram of art’ and I had to pretend I’d known that all along.

When I retired from my music November 1997, it had been 37 years.

Sometimes I wake up, I feel like, I’m like 80-years-old.

A cynic might conclude that the real purpose of the $500 million-a-year implant business is the implantation of fat in the bellies and rumps of underemployed plastic surgeons.

Madame Curie didn’t stumble upon radium by accident. She searched and experimented and sweated and suffered years before she found it. Success rarely is an accident.

The shows need youth. All of our comics are getting too famous to do the show regularly. The people who are regulars five years ago, a lot of them have moved on and can’t do the show anymore. We can’t really get Jim Gaffigan anymore, we can’t get Nick Swardson anymore.

Don’t have children: they deform women’s bodies and turn into an enemy 20 years later.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.