Top 149 Quotes & Sayings by Johnny Carson

I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.

My success just evolved from working hard at the business at hand each day.

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.

Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die.

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.

I was going to hang it up on the twenty-fifth year of this show. I don't know why. Maybe twenty-five years is enough. And I found out that I was having so much fun doing the show that we decided to stick around for a while.

I am one of the lucky people in the world: I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it.

There comes a time or a moment when you know in which direction you're going to go. I know it happened to me when I was quite young.

We're more effective than birth control pills.

Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: 'Are your ready?'

To be an entertainer, you gotta be a little gutsy, a little egotistical, so you have to pull back sometimes when people say, 'Well, he's stuck-up.' 'Stuck-up' is only another word for self-conscious.

Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.

If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.

Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.

Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.

Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.

Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.

Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.

The mind starts to do things that you didn't even realize it could do. I suppose it's the manipulation. I suppose it's the sense of power, the center of attention, and the me-ism. And performers have to have that.

People thought I was funny, so I kind of took entertaining for granted... it was inevitable that I'd start giving little performances.

People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

I know you've been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvelous. It must be very inexpensive.

For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.

If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.

The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

When turkeys mate they think of swans.

The closest thing to Roseanne Barr's singing the national anthem was my cat being neutered.

What's all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?

I hear that whenever someone in the White House tells a lie, Nixon gets a royalty.

There was this billy goat at a movie studio who found and ate a can of film. When a nanny asked him how he liked it, he said, "It was all right but I liked the book better."

According to statistics, it's a lot easier to get hit by lightning than to win a Lotto jackpot. The good side: you don't hear from your relatives.

Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.

I'm an entertainer, not a commentator. If you're a comedian your job is to make people laugh.

Happiness is discovering the prune juice your doctor ordered you to drink has fermented.

Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whiskey, and a dog to eat the rare steak.

The price of Christmas toys is outrageous - a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars for video games for the youngsters. I remember a Christmas years ago when my son was a kid. I bought him a tank. It was about a hundred dollars, a lot of money in those days. It was the kind of tank you could actually get inside and ride in. He played in the box it came in. It taught me a very valuable lesson. Next year he got a box. And I got a hundred dollars' worth of scotch.

In Hollywood if you don't have a shrink, people think you're crazy.

Happiness is sitting down to watch some slides of your neighbor's vacation and finding out that he spent two weeks in a nudist colony.

Happiness is being stuck in an elevator and discovering the ravishing blonde with you is a liquor salesman with a case of samples.

May you have the income of a Republican and the sex life of a Democrat!

I'm often asked, "What is your favorite moment during the 30 years you hosted [The Tonight Show]?" I really don't have just one. The times I enjoyed the most were the spontaneous, unplanned segments that just happened, like Ed Ames' infamous "Tomahawk Toss" that produced one of the longest laughs in television history. When these lucky moments happen, you just go with them and enjoy the experience and high of the moment.

When a comic becomes enamored with his own views and foists them off on the public in a polemic way, he loses not only his sense of humor but his value as a humorist.

The difference between divorce and legal separation is that legal separation gives a husband time to hide his money.

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties.

Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold onto. Usually a mop or a leaf blower.

Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?

Never marry a girl named 'Marie' who used to be known as 'Murray'.

For days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.

Never ask your wife if she still hears from her old pimp.

I hated my last boss. He asked, Why are you two hours late? I said, I fell downstairs. He said, That doesn't take two hours.

Whatever you do, you're going to be criticized.

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead.

Last night, it was so cold, the flashers in New York were only describing themselves.

Happiness is.....finding two olives in your martini when youre hungry.

An oxymoron? What's that? A moron who studies at Oxford?

The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.

Some sad news from Australia... the inventor of the boomerang grenade died today.

Despite the fact that computer speeds are measured in nanoseconds and picoseconds - one billionth and one trillionth of a second, respectively - the smallest interval of time known to man is that which occurs in Manhattan between the traffic signal turning green and the taxi driver behind you blowing his horn.

Happiness is seeing the muscular lifeguard all the girls were admiring leave the beach hand in hand with another muscular lifeguard.