Sam Kinison Quotes

Being a stand-up is my mission in life; it's my passion. My ongoing goal is to simply be funny, on my own, in front of a roomful of strangers.

I know I can get laughs anywhere, in front of any crowd, if I'm given the chance.

I try to make the majority of my audience laugh. That's my audience. They'll laugh at the dead terrorist.

I started quite young at school, compering a charity event at an old people's home. I would do stand up and impressions and enjoyed the laughter. It's very addictive. It's a lovely sensation to say something and hear a whole room laugh.

I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.

I love entertaining people and making them laugh. It's my favorite thing to do.

I've been at it since 1967, and I still love it. There is nothing quite like making people laugh.

I think I always was a bit of a class clown, but I don't know how successful I was at that. I always think, when I read about people being class clowns, I imagine them being actually very funny, and I don't know that I was. But I tried to be, I think.

I lived to make Scott Baio laugh.

To be a comedian, you gotta jokesmith, there's no way around it.

The jokes I used to do on 'Sex and the City' were always comic character things, and they were rarely hard jokes. As soon as you go up in front of people, it demands laughter.

Stand up is really fun because if I think of a joke or a funny idea, then I can just go and tell some people and if they laugh, they laugh right away.

My job has always been to entertain people. I want people to laugh.

I've been a stand-up comedian for years, and I can be silly.

I like the sound of laughter. I was the guy in the group of friends that would always make the friends laugh. And everyone was like, 'You should do stand up,' so I gave it a shot, and ta-da! They were right.

You know, I never knew if I had any talent when I started in this business. My first job was being a page at The Tonight Show. I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he'd done the night before. I thought, 'I can do that!' I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.

I'll do anything to get the laugh. I love it.

Most of the stuff I do on the show comes out of me just trying to make my friends laugh.

I don't know who I touch and who I don't. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don't have any secrets. I don't know the reasons I've been so well received.

With silly stuff, it's seventy-five percent confidence. I always tell people that it's because I'm nervous about getting that next laugh and I need to hear it. I always want to condense a joke.

The thing I gravitated to was being the class clown. It was very competitive.

Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.

People come up to me and they thank me: 'I thank you for the many, many hours of laughter.'

You can't substitute the act of making people laugh. It's definitely something that actors like to do.

I always performed as a kid to make my family laugh and was more concerned with making kids at school laugh than I was about the lessons.