Top 100 Bob Newhart Quotes
#1. I've always said people say on a dramatic show, 'I was crying. It was so emotional when he went and grabbed that little girl from a burning building and handed her over to her mother.' In comedy, the best thing you can say is, 'I think it's funny.'
Bob Newhart
#2. There was a sea of change in comedy in the late 1950s and '60s. We were dealing with vignettes as opposed to jokes. We were more socially aware.
Bob Newhart
#3. Stammering is different than stuttering. Stutterers have trouble with the letters, while stammerers trip over entire parts of a sentence. We stammerers generally think of ourselves as very bright.
Bob Newhart
#4. I just made the decision that I was going to try comedy, and if didn't work, then I knew it didn't work. Then I would go back and do whatever. But at least I wouldn't torture myself the rest of my life, wondering whatever would have happened.
Bob Newhart
#5. I think everyone probably starts out sounding like someone else, but gradually you develop your own sound.
Bob Newhart
#6. Comedians are innately programmed to pick up oddities like mispronounced words, upside-down books on a shelf, and generally undetectable mistakes in everyday life.
Bob Newhart
#7. I don't think of myself as an American Master. I've just been making a living.
Bob Newhart
#8. More and more, as I get older, people come up to me and say, 'Thank you for all the laughter.' And my standard answer is, 'It was my pleasure.' But that's the truth.
Bob Newhart
#9. I don't know how many sacred cows there are today. I think there's a little confusion between humor and gross passing for humor. That's kind of regrettable.
Bob Newhart
#10. Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.
Bob Newhart
#11. What you see on stage is pretty much the way I am ... a dry sense of humor.
Bob Newhart
#13. When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'
Bob Newhart
#14. Dick Martin, if you put a gun to his forehead, he couldn't tell you a joke.
Bob Newhart
#15. Stand-up is different from television. In stand-up, you've got to be in control.
Bob Newhart
#16. One of the first things that you learn as a stand-up is, you're the boss. It's your stage, and don't screw with me because I'll make you look bad, which I had to do, because you wind up with drunks and loud people.
Bob Newhart
#17. I don't think too much about age. Maybe if you're hurting, aching and arthritic, then you think about it a lot. But I don't.
Bob Newhart
#18. Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it's part of the collective brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class.
Bob Newhart
#19. You may not think I'm a sex symbol, but I became a father at the age of 48. Now young people think of me as a mini-folk hero because it's difficult for them to believe a man of my age is sexually active.
Bob Newhart
#20. I loved 'Everybody Loves Raymond' because I like Ray and I thought it was beautifully cast, I thought it was great writing. I thought Patricia Heaton was wonderful.
Bob Newhart
#21. The highest of highs is to have a new routine that you're just breaking in and that's working, and that's - you're one step removed doing a situation comedy because you have a live audience there.
Bob Newhart
#22. I left 'The Bob Newhart Show,' which was my decision. CBS wanted it to go on. But I could see television changing; I could see the tastes were changing.
Bob Newhart
#23. I know Chuck Lorre personally, and am familiar with his work going back to 'Roseanne' and 'Cybil.'
Bob Newhart
#25. A guy walks into a psychologist's convention with a banana in his pocket.When asked about the significance of this he says;well,they were all out of grapes.
Bob Newhart
#26. In today's world, you would call my father mostly unaccessible. I'm not sure that isn't true of most fathers at that time. He went through the Depression. I don't know what that would have done to my psyche.
Bob Newhart
#27. Every new routine I have ever written and performed probably occurred extemporaneously. Then after you have fleshed it out and tried it out in front of a number of audiences and it works, you put it down on paper.
Bob Newhart
#28. Don't live in the past. There's no point. You can't change anything. What a waste of time.
Bob Newhart
#29. I always stayed away from political commentary. First of all, I didn't feel entitled. What I may feel about a candidate, I'm a comedian. I mean, if people like my comedy, that doesn't mean they should vote for the person I like. That's why I always kind of stayed away from endorsements.
Bob Newhart
#30. I made people laugh as a kid, but that's not how you make a living.
Bob Newhart
#31. It's getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves.
Bob Newhart
#32. There are a lot of questions I keep asking myself about why I do comedy. I guess I laugh to keep from crying. And I guess if you ever get me crying, I might not stop. This is the way I look at tragedy or else I'll cry.
Bob Newhart
#33. I'm glad you can't talk on your cells while the plane is in the air. That would drive me crazy.
Bob Newhart
#34. This stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to screw with it now.
Bob Newhart
#35. You should have a value system. You can win if you stick with your value system.
Bob Newhart
#36. I think you should be a child for as long as you can. I have been successful for 74 years being able to do that.
Bob Newhart
#37. I love portraying the totally indifferent person.
Bob Newhart
#38. Sometimes you forget you're famous. You wonder, 'Why is that person staring at me?'
Bob Newhart
#39. I couldn't play off people that I don't personally like.
Bob Newhart
#40. I made a record album in 1960 and it exploded, and I got all these offers for TV.
Bob Newhart
#41. I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is the affection. Even though you're poking fun at someone or something, there's still an affection for it.
Bob Newhart
#43. I have no intention of retiring; I can't imagine not doing stand-up. That's where I started and where I'll be.
Bob Newhart
#44. With the advent of cell phones, especially with the very small microphone that attach to the cell phone itself, it's getting harder and harder I find, to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone.
Bob Newhart
#45. The best advice I was probably given and the best advice I could give someone who is trying to get into the comedy field is to take advantage of every opportunity you have to work to hone your skills.
Bob Newhart
#46. The only thing I have never done is a Broadway play. I'm not sure I have the discipline necessary to do a Broadway play. I know it holds a fascination for certain actors.
Bob Newhart
#47. Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.
Bob Newhart
#48. I've been married forty-five years. I think laughter is the secret.
Bob Newhart
#49. I always hated when the studios just kind of said that anybody can act. You look at people like Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda - and I'm just talking about the male actors - there aren't a lot who can act. It's a very special talent, and I wish it were recognized as a very special talent.
Bob Newhart
#50. I was never a Certified Public Accountant ... I just had a degree in accounting. The reason I was never a Certified Public Accountant was because it would require passing a test, which I would not have been able to do.
Bob Newhart
#51. I am a minimalist. I like saying the most with the least.
Bob Newhart
#52. I certainly don't delude myself that there aren't certainly more important things to do in life than make people laugh, but I can't imagine anything that would bring me more joy.
Bob Newhart
#53. When I started, I was doing all the good comedians I'd ever seen. Then I developed my own voice. My routines are my natural way of looking at the world.
Bob Newhart
#54. I didn't need the elf outfit to play an elf; I could just play an elf.
Bob Newhart
#55. One of the first things you ever learn as a stand-up is don't show fear.
Bob Newhart
#56. I was influenced by every comedian I ever saw work. That's the only way you learn how to do it.
Bob Newhart
#57. When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.
Bob Newhart
#58. Well I was much too practical to presume to have a career in comedy.
Bob Newhart
#59. The first time I heard Richard Pryor, I knew he would be a major force in the world of comedy.
Bob Newhart
#60. The first time I got up in front of an audience was terror, abject terror, which continued for another four or five years. There still is, a little bit.
Bob Newhart
#61. I found the most difficult thing when you became successful - when I had the record album, it won Album of the Year - that you were cut off from the source of your material. Your material was everyday people, and you were kind of cut off from that, and you had to work at it.
Bob Newhart
#62. If 'The New York Times' says it, it must be true.
Bob Newhart
#63. Probably the best advice I ever got in my life was from the head of the accounting department, Mr. Hutchinson, I believe at the Glidden Company in Chicago, and he told me, 'You really aren't cut out for accounting.'
Bob Newhart
#65. I still feel 30, except when I try to run.
Bob Newhart
#66. But I really believe that if you have the ability, there is an obligation to make people laugh
Bob Newhart
#67. Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago.
Bob Newhart
#68. As an actor, you generally want to see the other actor's face.
Bob Newhart
#69. One time I happened to use the word 'denigrate' onstage, and it didn't get any reaction. So as I continued my act, the left side of my brain was fast-forwarding to see if I had any other big words coming up.
Bob Newhart
#70. Humor's a weapon if you want to make it one.
Bob Newhart
#71. People are meant to be certain places, and I think I'm meant to be on a sound stage doing situation comedy.
Bob Newhart
#72. I can't remember the last live-action, non-animated Christmas movie.
Bob Newhart
#73. I really don't know what makes a comedian. I think it's a family background and environment. Yet if you put the same ingredients in another person, he may never utter a funny line.
Bob Newhart
#74. The schizophrenic has no sense of humor. His world is a constantly daunting, unfriendly place.
Bob Newhart
#75. Cell phones have gotten so small, you can't tell who's a cell phone user and who's a schizophrenic.
Bob Newhart
#76. I don't have a show anymore. I don't have a check coming in every week. This is important to me, I got to score a million tonight or it could all be over.
Bob Newhart
#77. Comedians are never really on vacation because you're always at attention ... that antenna is always out there.
Bob Newhart
#78. For some reason, comedians are still children. The social skills somehow never reach us, so we say exactly what we think without weighing the results.
Bob Newhart
#79. It was a decision to work clean. I just prefer to work that way. I have no problem with comedians who don't work that way. There was a temptation in the early '70s to reconsider. I decided against it.
Bob Newhart
#81. I don't know how doctors pick one specialty over another. Some you can understand. Pediatricians. Or gynecologists delivering babies, bringing a new life into the world, but how does someone want to be a proctologist? How can you fall in love with proctology?
Bob Newhart
#82. You're not dead at 85. You're a long way from it. Go out and enjoy. You've earned it.
Bob Newhart
#85. Without great writing, you've got a bunch of actors bumping into each other.
Bob Newhart
#86. People have told me, 'My dad passed on, but I have great memories of watching your shows with him.' It doesn't get any better than that.
Bob Newhart
#87. I've had time off, and it drove me nuts. I was crawling up the wall.
Bob Newhart
#88. I'm not what you'd call a Method actor.
Bob Newhart
#89. I think one reason for a successful marriage is laughter. I think laughter gets you through the rough moments in a marriage.
Bob Newhart
#90. I don't want to sound like the old guy, but cynicism is a potential danger. It colors our way of looking at the world.
Bob Newhart
#91. I wasn't much good. When I went into the line on a fake - I would holler 'I don't have it!'
Bob Newhart
#92. I was an accountant in Chicago, and a friend of mine, Ed Gallagher, was in advertising. At 4:30 every day I'd be bored, and I would call him. He'd interview me.
Bob Newhart
#93. You never know when you'll come upon something and it's going to be fodder for new material.
Bob Newhart
#94. There isn't a comedian in the world that hasn't bombed.
Bob Newhart
#95. I just don't think most people put myself and Robert Frost in the same category.
Bob Newhart
#96. If you look at Jack Benny, George Burns, or Don Rickles, they've all had long, successful marriages. So, I think there's something about laughter and the durability of a marriage.
Bob Newhart
#97. A collison is what happens when two motorists go after the same pedestrian.
Bob Newhart
#98. The only way to survive is to have a sense of humour.
Bob Newhart
#99. The reason I'm a psychologist is based in part on my telephone routines. Much of my humor comes out of reaction to what other people are saying. A psychologist is a man who listens, who is sympathetic.
Bob Newhart
#100. I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.
Bob Newhart
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
