Top 168 Quotes & Sayings by Mel Brooks

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American comedian Mel Brooks.

Last updated on December 25, 2024.

Mel Brooks is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a creator of broad farces and parodies widely considered to be among the best film comedies ever made. He began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show Your Show of Shows (1950–1954) alongside Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart. With Carl Reiner, he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man. He wrote, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series Get Smart (1965–1970).

American - Comedian | Born: June 28, 1926

Source: Wikipedia

We rest our case on the production numbers.

Mel Brooks

Dom DeLuise was a big man in every way. He was big in size and created big laughter and joy.

Mel Brooks

As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.

Mel Brooks

Judd Apatow is pretty good, both as a producer and as a director.

Mel Brooks

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you've gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.

Mel Brooks

Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

Mel Brooks

I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.

Mel Brooks

If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.

Mel Brooks

I wish I was better looking.

Mel Brooks

There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere.

Mel Brooks

I like Chris Rock. He's dangerous.

Mel Brooks

A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

Mel Brooks

I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.

Mel Brooks

I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.

Mel Brooks

All short women have a delayed fuse. Marry a taller woman: My wife was an inch or two taller than me; it's a sign of security.

Mel Brooks

Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.

Mel Brooks

The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.

Mel Brooks

I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances.

Mel Brooks

You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.

Mel Brooks

When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I've always felt okay in Berlin.

Mel Brooks

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

Mel Brooks

A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.

Mel Brooks

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

Mel Brooks

Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn't work. You can be politically incorrect if you're smart.

Mel Brooks

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

Mel Brooks

But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.

Mel Brooks

'Mad About You' was very fun.

Mel Brooks

Well, you know, 'Spaceballs' is a weird combination, because it's a simple, sweet little fairytale, and it's crazy and out-there and making fun of and taking apart sci-fi, 'Star Wars', and 'Star Trek'.

Mel Brooks

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.

Mel Brooks

Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.

Mel Brooks

Immortality is a by-product of good work.

Mel Brooks

I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.

Mel Brooks

My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible.

Mel Brooks

I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.

Mel Brooks

Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.

Mel Brooks

If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.

Mel Brooks

He who hesitates is poor.

Mel Brooks

If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.

Mel Brooks

If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

Mel Brooks

It's talent. Either you got it or you ain't.

Mel Brooks

Oh, I'm not a true genius. I'm a near genius. I would say I'm a short genius. I'd rather be tall and normal than a short genius.

Mel Brooks

We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody.

Mel Brooks

I only direct in self-defense.

Mel Brooks

As far as songwriters, I've always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin; those guys mean a lot to me.

Mel Brooks

These men both publicly and privately have done so much for me. Without Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick I would be living in a little motel just around the corner here, trying to make ends meet.

Mel Brooks

I'm still a horse that can run. I may not be able to win the Derby, but what do you do when you retire? People retire and they vegetate. They go away and they dry up.

Mel Brooks

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

Mel Brooks

A brushstroke of vanity is good to add into the mix, to balance your timidity. We're all blessed with a lot of timidity and a lot of worry and anxiety, and vanity is a good antidote.

Mel Brooks

You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.

Mel Brooks

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

Mel Brooks

If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

Mel Brooks

I know how to make it a great musical. I've got to. It's like I've got to see it on stage.

Mel Brooks

I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.

Mel Brooks

Tragedy is what happens to me; comedy is what happens to you.

Mel Brooks

When I was a little kid, if somebody said they were thirty-five, I'd say "Oooh, they're going to die soon". But as I get older it doesn't mean a thing. You mustn't ever give in. Never give in to thinking you're old, because you're never old. Your mind, and I tell you this and listen to me carefully, your mind is never, ever old, it's eternally young.

Mel Brooks

Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.

Mel Brooks

You want to be as smart as you can about being stupid.

Mel Brooks

The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation... but I hear that it's coming quickly.

Mel Brooks

I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.

Mel Brooks