Henny Youngman Quotes

Once an actor told me he went to the Shakespeare School of Acting, and I said, 'I went to the Shakespeare of Acting, too' and he said, 'Oh really?' And I said, 'I went to Shakespeare Elementary School in Chicago.' He didn't take the joke well, he didn't laugh and didn't think it was funny - I thought it was funny. It's all the same to me.

I like really bad puns - proper, red-top, nasty puns - I find them funny.

My wife went into the butchers and said: "You've a sheep's head in your window." The butcher said: "That's a mirror."

So I went in to a pet shop. I said, "Can I buy a goldfish?" The guy said, "Do you want an aquarium?" I said, "I don't care what star sign it is."

It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.

So I said to the gym instructor: 'Can you teach me to do the splits?' He said: 'How flexible are you?' I said: I can't make Tuesdays.'

Puns are a form of humor with words.

I had an idea of what I thought was funny. It's kind of based on how I am.

I have wit in my work and a sense of humor, but I do not use irony in any way.

Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.

I took up an offer for me to lose 30 pounds in 30 days. It worked. I lost 30 days!

The one thing that disturbs me about Alec is that people don't realize that he's really funny.

The best shows to tweet about are the ones that are hilarious, but they might not necessarily be trying to be hilarious. Those are the easiest and the funniest because you're like 'come onnnn.'

The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.

Comedy is unique in the sense that laughter is a palpable noise that everyone makes.

To do something funny, you have to have experienced it in real life and digested it in a way that amuses you.

You can't teach someone to be funny, but you can teach comic timing. If you listen to a good comic, you can learn how to put it on a page.

People want me to be funny all the time. They think I'm being funny no matter what I say or do and that's not the case.

Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don't laugh, that's funny.

So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?' He said 'It depends where you're calling from.'

I love puns. I've been known to turn the car around just to take advantage of a good pun situation. It really is the highest form of humor.

The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.

If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks, it's not funny.

Kind of the exhausting thing about doing pure comedy, or something that's broader, is you're kind of a slave to the laugh. If it's not funny, then there's not much point in doing it. The kind of ueber-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, 'Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny.'

My mother thinks Mick Jagger is a foreign car.