Top 100 Don Rickles Quotes
#1. Sex is great, but when you get to be my age, you've got to pace it a little bit. Otherwise you get tired.
Don Rickles
#2. I would describe myself as a guy that's very normal but has the tendency to rib people, but never in a mean-spirited way.
Don Rickles
#3. To this day, when I say that I went to the American Academy, people are very impressed. The reputation of the school has always been fantastic.
Don Rickles
#4. Sinatra had a lot of mood swings, but he was wonderful to my wife Barbara and to me. He made no bones about who he liked and who he loved, and he had this great charisma. When he walked into a room, it stopped. I've only seen that happen with Ronald Reagan.
Don Rickles
#5. I have a wonderful road manager, and he travels with me. And my valet and friend travels with me. My little entourage is great, and they take good care of me.
Don Rickles
#6. I have no idea what I'm going to say when I stand up to give a toast. But I do know that anything I say I find funny.
Don Rickles
#7. To my knowledge, I was the first guy really to do what I do. And then later on different comedians started trying doing it.
Don Rickles
#8. My style is my personality. It's always been that way. Being a wiseguy and having fun. It's always been that way for me, when I was in high school, and in the Navy. It's not something I rehearse.
Don Rickles
#9. Now when I'm not working, I don't really hang out with the young comics.
Don Rickles
#10. I was 28 when my father died, and I was an only child.
Don Rickles
#11. My mother was a Jewish General Patton.
Don Rickles
#12. I was always the guy - out of insecurities, I was always making fun, even as a kid.
Don Rickles
#13. I don't care if the average guy on the street really knows what I'm like, as long as he knows I'm not really a mean, vicious guy. My friends and family know what I'm really like. That's what's important.
Don Rickles
#16. Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.
Don Rickles
#17. I've never been mean-spirited, in my opinion. I never did anything below the belt.
Don Rickles
#18. Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.
Don Rickles
#19. I've been hot, I've been lukewarm, I've been freezing, but I've always been a headliner.
Don Rickles
#20. I was in World War II; I cried when they took me in the Navy. That's the last time I cried.
Don Rickles
#21. I used to play golf. I wanted to be a better player, but after a while I realized I'd always stink. And that's when I really started to enjoy the game.
Don Rickles
#22. It's very sweet to have people say nice things about you, and I always accept that.
Don Rickles
#23. I have a problem, if the light goes on on TV and it blinks midnight, I don't know how to fix it.
Don Rickles
#24. It's tough having the last name Rickles. Luckily, my kids handled it great.
Don Rickles
#25. Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I'm not a black.
Don Rickles
#26. Eddie Fisher married to Elizabeth Taylor is like me trying to wash the Empire State Building with a bar of soap.
Don Rickles
#27. Everything I've ever done in my whole career, people might not know, I've never written anything down on paper.
Don Rickles
#28. I'm not a big one for jokes. I can't tell a joke, believe it or not. If you gave me a thousand bucks and said, 'Don, get up at a party and tell a joke', I'm the worst.
Don Rickles
#29. When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit.
Don Rickles
#30. Alan King, a comedian I adored, was considered society, and I was considered the Jewish kid from the neighborhood.
Don Rickles
#31. I say things I get away with, and it becomes a joke.
Don Rickles
#32. When I first went to Vegas, there were just high-rollers and gamblers and the wise guys treated you great.
Don Rickles
#33. They always use the word 'insult' with me, but I don't hurt anybody. I wouldn't be sitting here if I did. I make fun of everybody and exaggerate all our insecurities.
Don Rickles
#34. The young comedians always ask me, 'What's the secret for staying around?' I tell them, 'There is no secret - just stay around. Longevity is the most important thing.'
Don Rickles
#35. Ninety percent of the people who come to see me are my fans.
Don Rickles
#36. I've never walked off stage and said, I shouldn't have done that. Because when you do what I do, you're like a fighter. You throw the right hand and say, That's what got me to this dance. You can't have doubt. If you have doubt, there's no show.
Don Rickles
#37. I have my own gym. When you do jokes and they sell, you get a gym.
Don Rickles
#38. The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.
Don Rickles
#39. The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.
Don Rickles
#40. When you do comedy, you can't please the world, although I'd like to think that most of my audiences were on my side.
Don Rickles
#41. Even when I was in high school and the Navy, I was the guy who could rip somebody, and they'd laugh at it.
Don Rickles
#42. I was nice to the people in the Philippines for the two and a half years I was there, because I knew eventually I'd have to kiss up to them so my grandchildren could have toys.
Don Rickles
#43. No matter where you go in this world, you will always find a Jew sitting in the beach chair next to you.
Don Rickles
#44. You throw your best punch, otherwise don't do it.
Don Rickles
#46. I don't feel an obligation to give everyone a hard time, but when they're important people, it's fun.
Don Rickles
#47. I'd like to think my performance is today. I never try to - it's so, as you know, watching me, I have a beginning, middle and ending. But every night the show changes and I relate to an audience and I relate to the young people.
Don Rickles
#48. You lose your energy, you lose that excitement and it gets the audience up.
Don Rickles
#49. Among my friends, I'm not a little Boy Scout, and they love my humor, thank God.
Don Rickles
#50. Bob Newhart, who is my best friend, is one of the guys I adore.
Don Rickles
#51. When you're 18, you're just so busy being scared and having fun - a crazy mixture - that you never thought of dying.
Don Rickles
#52. I couldn't sell air conditioners on a 98-degree day. When I demonstrated them in a showroom, I pushed the wrong button and blew the circuit.
Don Rickles
#53. I do situations and make fun of authority and life.
Don Rickles
#55. I grew up in an Orthodox family, as I grew older, I became Conservative and that's how it ended up. But I've developed that Jewish feel to my act from my surroundings and my family.
Don Rickles
#56. Johnny Carson was a big influence on me - all of those shows I did with him over the years, like, 100 of them, they made a bit of a name for me at the time, so that part of my life was very good.
Don Rickles
#57. I don't really tell a joke, I react to situations. The whole thing is just looking at somebody and showing all our weaknesses and exaggerating them, and that's how it becomes funny.
Don Rickles
#58. Some people say funny things, but I say things funny.
Don Rickles
#59. My whole act is off the top of my head.
Don Rickles
#60. I don't like to compare myself with anybody.
Don Rickles
#61. I cannot tell a joke. But I can do a situation, that it becomes a joke.
Don Rickles
#63. I'm always watching films. The Academy pretty much sends me every film that's ever been done. I enjoy watching them, especially with the people I know.
Don Rickles
#64. The average person pushes an elevator button 6 or 7 minutes before realizing it's not working. I did a study on this, you know.
Don Rickles
#65. Who picks your clothes - Stevie Wonder?
Don Rickles
#66. You know what's funny to me? Attitude.
Don Rickles
#67. In the 45 years I've worked in casinos, I dreamed of being honored by an organization like the American Gaming Association, especially since I don't even have a hunting license.
Don Rickles
#68. Smartphones. Who cares? Smartphones. I only have dummy phones.
Don Rickles
#69. You've got to be able to sell yourself.
Don Rickles
#70. To me, the stand up part in my life is great. I know I can do that. When I get an acting chance, I'm really thrilled.
Don Rickles
#71. My father was an insurance man and a small-time gambler. He was a good man, but he had an eye for the racehorses, and I saw how it used to bother my mother. I've never gambled a dime. Never, in all those years in Vegas.
Don Rickles
#72. So many young people think the big sex act is the whole movie, but that's not the case. You need to be able to talk and laugh and cry together.
Don Rickles
#73. Las Vegas is the boiling pot of entertainment.
Don Rickles
#74. When you first start out with something new, you're always a little uptight.
Don Rickles
#75. Struggling is hard because you never know what's at the end of the tunnel.
Don Rickles
#76. Bob Hope was totally regimented. I go in and say a line like, 'Hi Bob' and I'd have to do it five times, and then Bob would take me to the writers to say the line different ways. He wouldn't let me ad-lib.
Don Rickles
#77. In our day we went from - we went into saloons. We couldn't cross over like you can today, get a television series and all of a sudden you're a major movie star, you know.
Don Rickles
#78. I ride a recumbent bike for half an hour every day.
Don Rickles
#79. Half the battle is that people have to like you before you say one joke, one bit of humor.
Don Rickles
#80. Room service is great if you want to pay $500 for a club sandwich.
Don Rickles
#81. If I have learned anything, it is to keep my wife happy by sending her lavish gifts. Other men can learn from my success and send their wives and girlfriends fresh flowers for birthdays, anniversaries, and of course, Valentine's Day.
Don Rickles
#82. Italians are fantastic people, really. They can work you over in an alley while singing an opera.
Don Rickles
#83. The thing I love about Vegas is that it's a melting pot. It's like working Ellis Island.
Don Rickles
#84. I always say, when you're onstage you can't please everybody. I'm sure there are people who may not take to what I do, but that's okay. Thank God the majority are in my corner.
Don Rickles
#85. I have to have energy because I have a lot of expenses. A couple of cars, couple of dogs and a big estate.
Don Rickles
#86. If something strikes me as funny, I'll put it in my performance.
Don Rickles
#87. I'm very shy so I became very outgoing to protect my shyness.
Don Rickles
#88. My life was in Montreal years ago. Best food in the world.
Don Rickles
#89. I don't really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke.
Don Rickles
#90. Some people call me a legend and the last of the greats, and I appreciate it.
Don Rickles
#91. When you do see me, you'll get the idea from when you see me that it's all off the top of my head. A lot of it is a beginning, middle and the end. But it's different every night. I have a lot of jokes in my back pocket I've said over the years.
Don Rickles
#92. I still have drive, but everything is relative.
Don Rickles
#93. I've been to Philadelphia a lot of times over the years, playing the old Celebrity Room and most of the other clubs around there that don't exist anymore.
Don Rickles
#94. I've never had guys sit me down and say this is what you've got to do. It's my personality that makes me one of a kind, and I believe that.
Don Rickles
#96. I don't walk into a dinner party and say, 'You're an idiot; give me my coat.'
Don Rickles
#97. I want to be a dog, but I'm a pussycat.
Don Rickles
#98. I always rib people, but nobody ever gives me a hard time. I don't know why. Maybe they're afraid of what I might say. There's probably a lesson in that somewhere, but I don't know what it is.
Don Rickles
#99. An insult is mean or unkind. Milton Berle called me the Sultan of Insult, and I was called the King of Insult. But the guy that gave me the best title - and I use it to this day - was Johnny Carson. He called me Mr. Warmth.
Don Rickles
#100. I've got an accountant who's been with me forty years. If he makes a mistake, he dies.
Don Rickles
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