Top 150 Quotes & Sayings by Nick Offerman - Page 2

Whenever I have a stubborn position on something, I take a deep breath and swallow myself.

When it comes to marijuana, I think it's ridiculous to live in a country that espouses freedom, liberty and equality, yet won't follow through on a philosophy that says: "If it's not hurting anybody or their property, you can do any goddamn thing you want."

When I use weed creatively, I'm much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp.

There's a lot of common sense ... which I feel like we have lost touch with.

I don't put a great deal of stock in art trophies.

If you like comedy, go home and curl up with Leviticus. The writers of The Onion are handed Leviticus on their first day.

Men and women alike, if you think that altering the tip of your nose with surgery will make you happier, I would suggest you alter something much more malleable than your flesh, like your priorities, or your friends.

Only when you get into TV and film, do people really want you to be a 'specialist'.

I feel it's important to point out that I've earned my humility by being a jackass - like, I trip and fall on my face and say, "Oh, right. Don't think you're a big shot, because you've got a bloody nose now." So it's hard to say.

I've split my life between a few different disciplines.

When I was a kid, I lived in this small town way out in the country. We had three TV channels and one radio station. I couldn't even get my hands on good comic books. My aunt, who is a librarian, gave me Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie," and Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia." They were such incredible treasures to have in my somewhat mundane country life.

Not only do I recommend Wendell Berry to anyone who will talk to me for more than seven seconds, but I buy his books in quantity and send them to people. I bought a few dozen of his newest, "Our Only World."

Turn off your computer and go out of doors. Dig a large enough hole to transplant a mature apple tree. Nurture the tree, feed it, coddle it so that its fruit will be ample, bright and firm. Practice open-hand strikes against the rough bark of the trunk until it's time to harvest. Choose the champion of your apple crop, pluck it from the tree, and beat yourself about the face and tits with it until your mettle will suffice.

If I put down my tweeter machine for a minute, I actually can communicate with people. As an aside, astonishingly, I just started doing Twitter.

I think that laziness in many ways is the human condition, and that's what has led us to this place where, as we've developed technology.

I'm opposed to a lot of the time that we as a civilization have come to spend looking at screens. For my money, life is much delicious damn near everyplace but inside that screen.

I think that purity creates not only a higher level of artistic vision but a purer work ethic.

Jobs that require a suit upset me. They displease me much, as our world is rife with such superficial conformity.

I awaken. I consume oxygen, then bacon, eggs and black coffee, then my wife, then bacon.

I think all these great comforts that come from the human condition of trying to make things easier on ourselves also have these pitfalls, where things become so easy that we forget how enjoyable building a fence can be.

No matter how you decide to spend a little more time on your gestures of giving, the point is just quite simply that you do.

It was on a van ride home from the movie set that everything came together. I realized I had to get off Twitter. It just struck me that I couldn't stop everyone else from doing it, but I could certainly stop myself.

I'm enjoying the opportunity that Parks And Recreation affords me to exploit my own soapbox agenda, which is to try to encourage people to make things with their hands.

My wife, the actress Megan Mullally, was an English major at Northwestern University and loves fiction. Like so many things in my life, she curates things for me. For example, I have the daunting prospect of Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch" waiting for me when I get through my current reading pile.

Branding is quite an important thing. As an artist, you want to be able to explore facets of yourself.

If I had to pick one form of acting, it would be live theater. That's where I started; that's where I became a man, I think I'm still finishing up that job.

I was drinking a lot of bourbon. I was miserable. I was starting to get work, but it wasn't remotely satisfying. It was garbage compared to the theater I was doing.

I come from the theater, where I got into acting because I love transforming. I love nothing more than to be unrecognizable.

My career is inexplicable to me. So far I've just been not getting fired despite being myself.

I really bridled when Parks And Rec became popular and woodworking publications wanted me to do stuff with them.

One of the most poignant pieces of recent science fiction for me was the portrayal of the adults in the Pixar film WALL-E. I feel like we're on the cusp of becoming fat babies in floating chairs being fed everything in shake form, and I feel like I am as prone to laziness as anybody.

The fact that I have a job that people even watch is an incredible gift.

Of course smartphones are brilliant inventions, but the nefarious thing about Twitter and other social media is that it starts to fill all the gaps in your day. I quickly become an addict.

I learned the word non-conformist in fourth grade and immediately announced that I would grow up to become one.

Jack London is a very generous description of my small hiking, bicycling, and canoeing habit. I myself feel like a weak urbanite a lot of the time, because lots of my friends are incredible outdoorsmen and women.

I think the whole thing is kind of sad, honestly, in the same way that our civilization - particularly the consumers of pop culture - has grown so used to an emasculated, bare-chested leading man that something like simply growing a mustache can impress people.

I don't get nominated, and I have to say, I've probably gotten the greatest mass of press in my life through not getting nominated. It's definitely been a winning situation as far as I'm concerned.

I'm a very intermediate sax player, but now that Rob Lowe is on my show, I had to cop to him. Like, 'Dude your ridiculous fake sax playing [in St. Elmo's Fire] inspired me to pick up a horn.'

Actually, I'm not super-kickass at a lot of things.

When we think of an actor, we think of a tanned, frosted-tipped, model-looking guy. We don't think of a plumber.

Shut your damn mouth.

Damn it all, you have been given a life on this beautiful planet! Get off your ass and do something!

My education began in theater school, and it continues to this day. I just continued learning to be a better performer.

It's irrelevant to me if other people know who I am. I'm just, I'm really happy. It calms me down, too. If you're on top of an oilrig, fighting with politicians, or whatever - you need a bit of wisdom to realize that you're not always right, or that you're not always being reasonable, or you're not always listening.

When I got to Los Angeles, I started building cabins in peoples’ yards, building post-and-beam structures and cutting the joinery for those.

I just always had a penchant for performing for people.I'm a jackass clown.

We realized that the world of popular culture had been creating the perfect candidate for many years: the female champion of the universe.

I have a very healthy growth of both head and facial hair. People always want to attribute further superhuman powers to me. It's funny the way the audience really seems to want me, Nick the actor, to exhibit the same machismo as Ron Swanson.

I like to play women who are not strong at all, because, there's certainly plenty of myself that is no kind of a warrior.

Don't use barbiturates before going on stage. And be honest.

When I first met with agents, they said, "Okay, you're going to play plumbers and mechanics and bus drivers and farmers. Go."

A lot of people find themselves in the entertainment business - or perhaps society steers them toward it - because they're beautiful.

Children are so egocentric - they want to watch their lives, and not yours.

I'm quite excited to not play a Xena type character - it's probably closer to me than any character I've ever played.

I always call myself a "student" of the guitar.

I keep having these bros come up to me and say, "I used to watch you when I was a fetus," and I just want to kill them.

The world is split into two halves: the bacon, and the bacon eaters.

Let's just say I can never be cast again after Ron Swanson. Then I have a life of theater and woodworking and my wife to look forward to, and that doesn't make me anything but very happy.

I became very interested [in philosophy] after attending the U.N. Conference on sustainable development in Brazil.I'm very concerned about climate change and the world reaching a tipping point. And, I see other people who really just want to survive to make it to the next election, rather than making means of change.

I really thought that I'd be doing Shakespeare, honest to God. I did not foresee the whole action television thing. That was God's joke.