Top 225 Quotes & Sayings by Dick Van Dyke

Do you know that I was the anchor on the 'CBS Morning Show?' And my newsman was Walter Cronkite.

Emotionally, I'm about 13.

'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' was a movie that I repeatedly turned down. The movie's producer, Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli, known for his tight-fisted control of the James Bond movie franchise, desperately wanted to re-team Julie Andrews and me after the success we'd enjoyed with 'Mary Poppins.'

But I wish they would make a musical of some kind. I miss musicals so much. You don't see them anymore.

I never had a lot of drive, but because I had family responsibilities, I had a lot of tenacity - the tenacity of a drowning man.

I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!

I think most people will tell you that. They can go along and, while they're denying that they are addicted, say it's stress this, it's this, it's that. But I - it's - I think - I really believe there is a gene. Some people become addicted and others don't.

Everyone should dance. And everyone should sing. People say, 'Well, I can't sing.' Everybody can sing. That you do it badly is no reason not to sing.

Today, if you're not an alcoholic, you're nobody.

But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.

I can't work with my brother without laughing.

As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.

When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.

Once you're dead, your worries are over.

In the best of all worlds, the producers would take some responsibility for the kinds of things they're putting out. Unfortunately, they don't.

I'm crazy about Judi Dench.

For some reason, as time gets short in life, wasting time escaping through entertainment bothers me.

I did a 'Golden Girls' once, which shot in front of an audience, and that went well. I had a good time. But I need an audience, for comedy at least.

There are no sure answers, only better questions.

I never even had a bachelorhood: I went straight from my parents' home to a marriage.

I swim, go to the gym, and do a little dancing every day and a little singing.

I loved to fall down.

The American people hit the streets and did something that the government wouldn't do: the Civil Rights Act. It didn't go down well with the corporate world.

I've made peace with insecurity... because there is no security of any kind.

Here's the truth. Your teens and twenties are your Plan A. At 50, you're assessing whether Plan B or Plan C or any of the other plans you hatched actually worked. Your sixties and seventies, they're an improvisation.

Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.

'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life.

That rule about having to act one's age? I just don't buy it.

Once you get the kids raised and the mortgage paid off and accomplish what you wanted to do in life, there's a great feeling of: 'Hey, I'm free as a bird.'

I learned everything that I know about comedy and about show business and a lot about life from Carl.

The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.

The Horny Toad in Cave Creek has great food. When I'm in Arizona, I have at least one meal there. I have a daughter who lives out there, and Dee Dee Wood, who was the choreographer on 'Mary Poppins,' lives out there. I still get out there once in a while, but not in the summer.

I've always wanted to learn kick boxing.

A lot of violence, a lot of gore in it, and I just didn't want to do that kind of thing.

I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that's literally 70 years.

I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state.

We had all week to rehearse. An audience would come in at the end of the week and we'd our little show. Most of the ad- libbing happened during the week on the show.

I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book.'

Every morning I have something to do, I'm better off. It's bad to get up and not have something to do.

I'm really in retirement. My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

So at 16 I got a job at the local radio station. And I was working after school and weekends. I did the news; I did everything. I did - played records.

I married somebody half my age, and everybody thought I was crazy, but she is just an absolute angel.

I've always been a bit of an orphan, because actors say, 'Well, he's more of a dancer.' And dancers say, 'No. He's really a singer.' And singers say, 'No. He's an actor.'

In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.

I found out retirement means playing golf, or I don't know what the hell it means. But to me, retirement means doing what you have fun doing.

I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He - I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.

Stan said he used to keep Hardy late, make him miss his golf game, and really get him mad.

Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I'm just going to put: 'Glad I Could Help.'

Somebody sent me a British magazine listing the 20 worst dialects ever done in movies. I was No. 2, with the worst Cockney accent ever done. No. 1 was Sean Connery, because he uses his Scottish brogue no matter what he's playing.

When you're a kid, you lay in the grass and watch the clouds going over, and you literally don't have a thought in your mind. It's purely meditation, and we lose that.

I was the class clown, you know, that kind of thing, and I gathered around me a group of guys who also were silly. I was in all the plays and everything. But I don't know, at that time show businesses looked like the moon, you know, it was so far away. I wanted to be a radio announcer.

I played a killer twice. Once on 'Matlock,' on Andy Griffith's show, I got to play the killer.

It's more in my nature to be optimistic, I think. I'm one of those people who gets up on the right side of the bed in the morning.

I never wanted to be an actor, and to this day I don't. I can't get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man, and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.

When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got the job!' I said, 'Mr. Champion, I can't dance.' He said, 'We'll teach you what you need to know.'

Just knowing you don't have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn - and those are all good things.

Don't worry so much. Most of the things you worry about never end up happening.

I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced, and he said 'Yes, but it hurts now.' That's exactly it. I can still dance, too, but it hurts now!

I'm always announcing my retirement. I'm still not retired.

All of us involved say 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the best five years of our lives. We were like otters at play.