Top 165 Quotes & Sayings by Bob Newhart - Page 3

I don't have a show anymore. I don't have a check coming in every week. This is important to me, I got to score a million tonight or it could all be over.

The reason I'm a psychologist is based in part on my telephone routines. Much of my humor comes out of reaction to what other people are saying. A psychologist is a man who listens, who is sympathetic.

I can't remember the last live-action, non-animated Christmas movie.

I couldn't play off people that I don't personally like.

I feel more comfortable in comedy.

The giant superstars are people whose talent is so enormous that their death wish can't destroy it.

Continuing to do stand-up is always a challenge because the audiences and the environments in which you work very often differ.

You may not think I'm a sex symbol, but I became a father at the age of 48. Now young people think of me as a mini-folk hero because it's difficult for them to believe a man of my age is sexually active.

I don't have a stack of scripts...

I was never a Certified Public Accountant. I just had a degree in accounting. It would require passing a test, which I would not have been able to do.

But I really believe that if you have the ability, there is an obligation to make people laugh

A collison is what happens when two motorists go after the same pedestrian.

Cell phones have gotten so small, you can't tell who's a cell phone user and who's a schizophrenic.

I never had an aversion because I was active in the drama club. If I had that aversion I certainly wouldn't put myself in the position of being on stage. Of course, in the drama club you're hiding behind a character.

Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago.

I think everyone probably starts out sounding like someone else, but gradually you develop your own sound.

Women are more emotional. They do get flustered. Which is not to say that men are better than they. It's simply the way it is.

You should have a value system. You can win if you stick with your value system.

I think there are still words you can't use in family entertainment that you can use in a sitcom today.

Doormen are kind of invisible, people don't know their names. They just say, Thank you, or Good morning. I'd never thought about doormen before. They're a vanishing breed. More electronic doors are being introduced.

Television series are like the stock market. There's room for bears and bulls but no room for pigs.

I don't want to find the secret. I'm afraid all the joy will go out of it if I find the secret.

One of the first things you ever learn as a stand-up is don't show fear.

Well, if you’re a native Chicagoan, you know how dumb he [Dr. Robert Hartley] is. He gets on the Ravenswood El, he goes past his stop on Sheridan Road, he gets off in Evanston, where the El is on the ground, and then he walks back 55 blocks to his apartment. Now, would you want to have that man as a psychologist? A man who misses his stop every day?

I wasn't much good. When I went into the line on a fake - I would holler 'I don't have it!'

I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is the affection. Even though youre poking fun at someone or something, theres still an affection for it.

Every new routine I have ever written and performed probably occurred extemporaneously. Then after you have fleshed it out and tried it out in front of a number of audiences and it works, you put it down on paper.

Sometimes you forget you're famous. You wonder, Why is that person staring at me?

The problem is that we live in an uptight country. Why don't we just laugh at ourselves? We are funny. Gays are funny. Straights are funny. Women are funny. Men are funny. We are all funny, and we all do funny things. Let's laugh about it.

I've done more than I thought I was ever going to do. I've had a very long and very satisfying career.

Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it's part of the collective brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class.

In today's world, you would call my father mostly unaccessible. I'm not sure that isn't true of most fathers at that time. He went through the Depression. I don't know what that would have done to my psyche.

You never know when you'll come upon something and it's going to be fodder for new material.

I gave up accounting. I went in for about six months writing ad copy. I was fired from that, and then another guy and I did a kind of poor man's Bob and Ray kind of syndicated radio show. Then I decided to stick it out and see what happened. I'd give it a year, a year became two years, and then two years became three years, and then along came the record album.

There are a lot of questions I keep asking myself about why I do comedy. I guess I laugh to keep from crying. And I guess if you ever get me crying, I might not stop. This is the way I look at tragedy or else I'll cry.

The best advice I could give someone trying to get into the comedy field is to take advantage of every opportunity you have to work to hone your skills.

Stammering is different than stuttering. Stutterers have trouble with the letters, while stammerers trip over entire parts of a sentence. We stammerers generally think of ourselves as very bright. My own private theory is that stammerers have so many ideas swirling around their brains at once that they can't get them all out, though I haven't found any scientific evidence to back that up.

There's a lot of cynicism. Let's really enjoy Christmas, with all that's going on in the world.

One of the first things that you learn as a stand-up is, you're the boss. It's your stage, and don't screw with me because I'll make you look bad, which I had to do, because you wind up with drunks and loud people.

I didn't need the elf outfit to play an elf; I could just play an elf.

I've been married forty-five years. I think laughter is the secret.

I kind of do it in my head, then I'll try pieces of it on stage and if it looks promising, I'll put it together.

I'm one of those passengers who arrives at the airport five or six hours early so I can throw back a few drinks and muster up the courage to board the plane. Apparently I'm not alone because I've never been in an empty airport bar. I don't care what time you get there. Even at 8:00 a.m. you have to fight your way to the bar. At that hour, everyone drinks Bloody Marys so no one can tell it's booze- at least until they fall off their chair.

As an actor, you generally want to see the other actor's face.

There's gratification in making somebody laugh. It's a wonderful sound. I find myself, to this day, doing it, wanting to make people laugh.