Fred Allen Quotations

An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.

A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin.

California is a fine place to live - if you happen to be an orange.

It is probably not love that makes the world go around, but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners recognize their dependence on each other for the achievement of shared and private goals.

Some movie stars wear their sunglasses even in church. They're afraid God might recognize them and ask for autographs.

I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back.

The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand.

A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.

A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done.

I don't have to look up my family tree, because I know that I'm the sap.

My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense.

Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.

The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion.

I play a musical instrument a little, but only for my own amazement.

I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can't remember what the third thing is.

I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.

All I know about humor is that I don't know anything about it.

Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.

A gentleman is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.

An income tax form is like a laundry list - either way you lose your shirt.

If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race.

An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.

During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

Committee - a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.

The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference.

Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything.

What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement.

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.

Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.

An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.

Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.

Television is the triumph of machine over people.

California is a great place to live if you're an orange.

A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better.

The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed.

Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.

My uncle is a Southern planter. He's an undertaker in Alabama.

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there.

If the grass is greener in the other fellow's yard -- let him worry about cutting it.

We take nominations from the general public, and they go through a screening and voting, which has worked very well for the most part. But it's been a less-than-perfect system for long-dead inventors who don't have a constituency to push for them.

He's a fine fellow. I've known him a long time. I say they'll never catch him.

When a radio comedian's program is finally finished it slinks down Memory Lane into the limbo of yesteryear's happy hours. All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.

Television is a triumph of equipment over people and the minds that control it are so small that you could put them in a gnat's navel with room left over for two caraway seeds and an agent's heart

A vice president in an advertising agency is a ""molehill man"" who has until 5 PM to make a molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished even before lunch.

Not every one of those lower-income taxpayers becomes a cost to a state-funded system.

I had to come out one more time to take a look. I had a lot of fun and spent a lot of time out here. Our kids grew up out here.

If you want to stop people from smoking, it takes a much larger tax increase.

In show business, more showgirls are kept than promises.

Vaudeville could not vouch for the honesty, the integrity, or the mentality of the individuals who collectively made up the horde the medium embraced. All the human race demands of its members is that they be born. That is all vaudeville demanded. You just had to be born. You could be ignorant and be a star. You could be a moron and be wealthy. The elements that went to make up vaudeville were combed from the jungles, the four corners of the world, the intelligentsia and the subnormal.

Father Time is the make-up man responsible for the physical changes that determine the parts the average actor is to play.

A comedian who starts talking to himself becomes his own audience. This is fatal.

I'd rather have two girls at seventeen than one at thirty-four.

If children could vote, Jesse Jackson would be our next president.

Hush, little bright line, don’t you cry You’ll be a cliché by and by.

Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all.

The S.S. Sierra was a ten-thousand-ton vessel. Today, lifeboats bigger than the Sierra are found on the Queen Mary and other luxury liners.

He has no idea what it was like to grow up in the South, where you had to hold your head down.

My hometown was so dull that one time the tide went out and never came back.

When Jack Benny plays the violin, it sounds as though the strings are still in the cat.

I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered in me and I started shaking. And then I walked back into the house and my wife asked, 'What's the matter?' and I said 'I don't feel good.' And tears - uncontrollable tears - was coming out of my eyes. And she said, 'What's the matter?' And I said 'I just thought about that execution I did two days ago, and everybody else's that I was involved with.' And what it was something triggered within and it just - everybody - all of these executions all of a sudden sprung forward.

He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both eyes.

Cocktail party: A gathering held to enable forty people to talk about themselves at the same time. The man who remains after the liquor is gone is the host.

The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows the average man can see much better than he can think- Ladies' Home JournalI'd rather have two girls at seventeen than one at thirty-four

He's so small, he's a waste of skin.

Success is like dealing with your kid or teaching your wife to drive. Sooner or later you'll end up in the police station.

The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.

Television is a triumph of equipment over people,

I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.

There are two kinds of jokes - funny jokes and Jack Benny jokes.

A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 AM and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 PM to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.

With the advance of refrigeration, I hope that along with the frozen foods someday we will have frozen conversation. A person will be able to keep a frozen promise indefinitely.

Three million frogs' legs are served in Paris - daily. Nobody knows what became of the rest of the frogs.

On ships they call them barnacles; in business they attach themselves to desks and are called vice presidents.

My agent gets 10 percent of everything I get, except the blinding headaches.

Everywhere outside New York City is Bridgeport, Connecticut.

She used to be a teacher but she has no class now.

To a newspaperman, a human being is an item with skin wrapped around it.

The average vice-president is a form of executive fungus that attaches itself to a desk. On a boat this growth would be called a barnacle.

It was once rumored that fledgling executives walked around their offices backwards so they wouldn't have to face an issue.

Hollywood is a great place if you're an orange.

All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.

He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in my goose.

English coffee tastes like water that has been squeezed out of a wet sleeve.

After quitting radio I was able to live on the money I saved on aspirins.

He always had a chip on his shoulder that he was ready to use to kindle an argument.

A psychiatrists is the next man you start talking to after you start talking to yourself.

I'm a little hoarse tonight. I've been living in Chicago for the past two months, and you know how it is, yelling for help on the way home every night. Things are so tough in Chicago that at Easter time, for bunnies the little kids use porcupines.

If the grass is greener in the other fellow's yard- let him worry about cutting it.