Top 28 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Russell

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Mark Russell.
Last updated on April 22, 2025.
Mark Russell

Mark Russell is an American political satirist and comedian. He is best known for his series of semimonthly comedy specials on PBS television between 1975 and 2004. His routines were a mix of political stand-up humor covering current events and musical parodies in which he accompanied himself on his trademark American flag-themed piano.

If you call your opponent a politician, it's grounds for libel.
You know that a given in life in human nature, is that at a sporting event, a baseball game, a football game, you never introduce a politician, is because he'll be booed. I don't care if he's the most beloved person in the world, its part of the game.
You've got the brain-washed, that's the Democrats, and the brain-dead, that's the Republicans! — © Mark Russell
You've got the brain-washed, that's the Democrats, and the brain-dead, that's the Republicans!
The way money goes so fast these days, they should paint racing stripes on it.
The thing that you're faulted on today is not that you are too tough, or not that you aren't careful. It's that you might have been too soft. People want that red meat now because you have to keep up with the mood and the mood today is harsh. It really is.
Rush has done some top-notch quality work, and we're very, very pleased with them. We really enjoy working with them. They are on time and on budget, which makes me happy.
You know when Jerry Ford gets the best joke, you know you're in trouble.
Believe me when I say that Bill Clinton's second term will be good for business. My business.
If the audience doesn't like it, usually they're just silent. But they've never all walked out at once.
I believe that Bill Clinton's second term will be good for business... my business!
I do jokes about what's funny, and both sides are funny.
I can't think of a performer who is better on television than in person.
The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
I'll keep doing it until I die or the audiences die.
Humor is very very risky, particularly for a candidate, unless he's been in so long that it just doesn't matter, and he's not running for president. But it's just that people are so sensitive and so touchy, and you're just going to upset somebody without ever realizing it.
People are not in a good mood when any politician's face appears on television.
We're just moving along as quick as possible.
The Republicans have a new healthcare proposal: Just say NO to illness!
A Consultant is a guy who knows 125 different ways to make love, but who doesn't know any women.
I'm not trying to write a bleak and blistering screed against American civilization. I'm writing something that I hope is fun and satirical and full of possibility.
I think even the characters that are fundamentally evil and wrong, I want people to really love them. I think that's important to writing believable characters. They don't have to be likable but they have to be loved, at least by the author.
I think you can't write with anger. I think it always has to be with a wink. There always has to be an element of hope in what you write. Otherwise you're just getting mad and it's not going to be fun for anybody.
You have to imbue the characters with their own sort of feeling of justification and morality. Everyone has that, whether we see them as evil or not. So I try to bring the characters to life by making them likable or lovable, in the sense that they can be, at least to themselves.
I squirm when I see athletes praying before a game. Don't they realize that if God took sports seriously he never would have created George Steinbrenner. — © Mark Russell
I squirm when I see athletes praying before a game. Don't they realize that if God took sports seriously he never would have created George Steinbrenner.
The sacred exists only at the expense of the truth.
Young people, take heart: the older you get, the fewer commandments you will have the strength to break.
You have the establishment and then you have the hippies revolting against the establishment, and what you end up getting are like accountants with long hair. And that's kind of what happened with the youth movement in the '70s.
Being an Olympian is the ultimate test of one's sporting ability.
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