Top 249 Quotes & Sayings by Andy Rooney - Page 4

My advice is not to wait to be struck by an idea. If you're a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea. That's the way to get an idea.

Ugly is very popular this year...I had a feeling these clothes were deigned by someone who didn't like women.

New ideas are one of the most overrated concepts of our time. Most of the important ideas that we live with aren't new at all.

I never understood retirement. What is the attraction of retirement? I go down there to Florida and look around and I said, my God, who wants this? Not me.

Flying is always an unpleasant experience. You wait an hour for every ten minutes you actually spend getting anywhere.

There is obviously a great human need for religion because life seems to be such a mystery.

Everyone hates war, everyone says.

One day about 10 years ago the door to my office opened and who walked in but Bill Gates.... Seemed like a nice guy and has done more with his money than most billionaires. But that's as far as I want to go being kind to Bill Gates.

There are more beauty parlors than there are beauties.

You really can't blame the military for wanting to go to war [in Iraq]. They've got all these new toys and they want to know whether they work or not.

I like animals who trust people.

I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some governmental stooge with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts for squirting out babies.

I am interested in details. If you go into anything far enough, you get into the details of it, and people turn out to be interested in what makes things work.

No matter what any of the grammar teachers say, punctuation is an arbitrary matter. It should be used to make sentences clear.

People waiting for an elevator don't know what to do, standing with strangers. There is nothing to do. Its an uneasy time. Some press the button repeatedly as though it would help.

We've sent a man to the moon and that's 29,000 miles away. The center of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week but for some reason nobody's ever done it.

When there are starving people in the world, it seems wrong that so many of us Americans eat as much for entertainment as for nourishment.

Not many people in this world are as lucky as I've been. ... All this time I've been paid to say what is on my mind on television. You don't get any luckier in life than that.

It is possible to be dumb and be a college president.

Milk without fat is like nonalcoholic Scotch.

Numbers tend to give the impression that there's more order in the world than there is.

One of the things we can be sure of over the July 4th weekend is that news reports will keep telling us how many of us are going to die in automobile accidents.

I know a lot of you believe that most people in the news business are liberal. Let me tell you, I know a lot of them, and they were almost evenly divided this time. Half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.

Space, like Switzerland, should be neutral.

I just wish insignificance had more stature.

I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.

I often pass a farm with cows grazing in the field and I think to myself how terrible it is that human beings grow other animals just to kill them and eat them. Most of us think of vegetarians as nuts and I'm not a vegetarian but I wouldn't be surprised if we came to a time in 50 or 100 years when civilized people everywhere refused to eat animals.

Almost all of us have an elevator or two in our lives somewhere. We wait for them, we ride on them. We're annoyed by the wait but pleased with the lift.

People like to say, "You're only as old as you feel," but it isn't true. It's just something old people say to make themselves feel good about their age. You're as old as you are.

The teacher who knows the most about a subject isn't necessarily the one who can teach it best.

In Washington, a confidential assistant is someone who, if you don't want to know something, you go and ask him and he won't tell you.

I think a draft produces a better Army than the one we would have with all volunteers, because I think you get average Americans if you have a draft. And if it's an all-volunteer Army, you get people who join up because of some problem in their own lives. They don't have anything else to do, they don't have a job, or they can't find what they want to do, so they join the Army. And it doesn't produce the best Army.

The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature. If some of our great decorated trees had been grown in a remote forest area with lights that came on every evening as it grew dark, the whole world would come to look at them and marvel at the mystery of their great beauty.

Where some people may see loving grandparents, I see a pair of feckless boobs who can't drive, take way too long to shop, and don't even have the most basic grasps on the new technology. As a staunch supporter of the principles of Darwinism, I think that advances in modern medicine are starting to overrule the survival of the fittest, and it's to our [youngers'] detriment.

I like Valentine's Day. The trouble is the florists and the candy-makers and the card people are all advertising so much, you don't dare let the day go by without making an offering, whether you mean it or not. Money exceeds affection.

I never get over feeling bad about tearing open a beautifully wrapped present. It takes ten seconds to destroy a work of art that took someone ten minutes to accomplish.

There are only a few safe targets left, just a few groups of people you can say anything negative about without getting in trouble for it. I've made a list of safe targets and I probably ought to stick to those. Politicians, for instance. You can say anything you want about them, and it doesn't matter how unfair you are. People seem to like it.

Writers don't often say anything that readers don't already know, unless its a news story. A writer's greatest pleasure is revealing to people things they knew but did not know they knew. Or did not realize everyone else knew, too. This produces a warm sense of fellow feeling and is the best a writer can do.

Before a kid learns how to use a computer that can solve mathematical problems, he or she should know how to do arithmetic without a computer.

If you do see me in a restaurant, please, just let me eat my dinner.

Phyllis Schlafly speaks for all American women who oppose equal rights for themselves.

When you get older you have to be careful about always saying, "Things aren't as good as they used to be." But it's hard not to.

Dogs are nicer than people.

Bacon is clearly a food made by the Nazis to fatten up Americans. It has no nutritional value, is full of fat, sodium, and nitrates, and is a pathetic type of consumable made from the noblest of creatures.

I think Dan [Rather] is transparently liberal. Now he may not like to hear me say that. I always agree with him, too. But I think he should be more careful.

I spent my first 50 years trying to become known as a writer and the next 30 trying to avoid being famous. I walk down the street or go to a football game and people shout, 'Hey Andy'. I hate that.

Finding the tool is often half the battle.

I'm already suspicious of anyone who thinks he or she is smart enough to be president. You'd have to have some ego to believe that about yourself.

I did not believe in the war. I thought it was wrong to go into any war. And I got to the war, and saw the Germans, and I changed my mind. I decided we were right going into World War II.

I hate to say it, but I had a great time in World War II.

I've done a lot of complaining here, but of all the things I've complained about, I can't complain about my life.

You're better off missing a bus or an airplane once in a while than you are getting there too early all the time.

If you put on an item of clothing that hurts just because you have an idea it looks better or conforms to what other people are wearing, it's dumb.

Love is more pleasant once you get out of your twenties. It doesn't hurt all the time.

American closets are filled with once-worn clothes that got a bad review from a friend on their first appearance.

Soap, like people, shouldn't smell like anything.

When I write, I use an Underwood #5 made in 1920. Someone gave me an electric typewriter, but there's no use pretending you can use machinery that thinks faster than you do. An electric typewriter is ready to go before I have anything to say.

Let's face it, though, anything that's apt to happen to an appliance like a blender isn't covered by the warranty anyway, so I never send them in. If it breaks, I'll buy a new one. That's the American way.

I try to look nice. I comb my hair, I tie my tie, I put on a jacket, but I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got.

Most college students are not as smart as most college presidents.