Top 100 George Burns Quotes
#1. If you were married to Marilyn Monroe, you'd cheat with some ugly girl.
George Burns
#2. Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.
George Burns
#3. I smoke ten to fifteen cigars a day. At my age I have to hold on to something.
George Burns
#4. I must be getting absent-minded. Whenever I complain that things aren't what they used to be, I always forget to include myself.
George Burns
#5. I've been a straight man for so many years that from force of habit I repeat everything. I went out fishing with a fellow the other day and he fell overboard. He yelled, Help! Help! Help! so I said, Help? Help? Help? And while I was waiting for him to get his laugh, he drowned.
George Burns
#7. Bridge is a game that separates the men from the boys. It also separates husbands and wives.
George Burns
#8. First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.
George Burns
#9. Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.
George Burns
#10. If I get big laughs, I'm a comedian. If I get little laughs, I'm a humorist. If I get no laughs, I'm a singer.
George Burns
#11. Actually, it only takes one drink to get me loaded. Trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or fourteenth.
George Burns
#12. In what other business can a guy my age drink martinis, smoke cigars and sing? I think all people who retire ought to go into show business. I've been retired all my life.
George Burns
#13. When I die I intend to take my music with me. I don't know what's out there, but I want to make sure it's in my key.
George Burns
#15. Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.
George Burns
#16. Take care not to wear stripes that are out of sync with your wrinkles.
George Burns
#17. I look better, feel better, make love better and I'll tell you something else ... I never lied better.
George Burns
#18. Much later in life, though, Gracie made a major contribution to the opera world. She stayed out of it.
George Burns
#19. I like women to be attracted to me. See, when you get 60 years old, and they know you're 60, the only women you can get are 55-year-old women, and I like younger women.
George Burns
#20. I get up every morning and read the obituary column. If my name's not there, I eat breakfast.
George Burns
#21. Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.
George Burns
#22. Tennis is a young man's game. Until you're 25, you can play singles. From 25 to 35, you should play doubles. I won't tell you exactly how old I am, but when I played, there were 28 men on the court - just on my side of the net.
George Burns
#23. At home we ate fish every Friday, as Catholics were then supposed to do. Being Jewish, I compromised. I wore a hat when I ate fish, out of respect for my own religion and the fish's family.
George Burns
#24. Retire? I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the only one left
George Burns
#25. Define your business goals clearly so that others can see them as you do.
George Burns
#26. I don't care what you do for a living. If you love it, you are a success.
George Burns
#27. None of us kids had a middle name. We were lucky we had any name at all. By the time my mother got around to naming one, there was another on the way.
George Burns
#28. People are always asking me how much I'm worth. Well, all I can say is, I've got enough money to last me the rest of my life. As long as I die in the next 20 minutes.
George Burns
#29. I find you have to take each day as it comes and be thankful for who's left and whatever you can still do.
George Burns
#30. Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.
George Burns
#31. There will always be a battle between the sexes because men and women want different things. Men want women and women want men.
George Burns
#32. I worried about playing God (in the movie Oh God). We're about the same age, but we grew up in different neighborhoods.
George Burns
#33. The heart is a temple wherein all truth resides.
George Burns
#34. I'm onstage for an hour.I do an hour of stand-up. Actually, I do 10 minutes standing up and 50 minutes sitting in a chair. Oh, occasionally, I stand up again to do a dance or put over a song. But mostly I sit down. A great invention, sitting down.
George Burns
#35. When they saw me walking down the street smoking a cigar, they'd say, 'Hey, that 14-year-old kid may be going places.' Of course it's also a good prop on the stage ... When you can't think of what you're supposed to say next, you can puff on your cigar until you think of your next line.
George Burns
#36. In show business the key word is honesty. Once you've learned to fake that, the rest is easy.
George Burns
#37. It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
George Burns
#38. There are two kinds of cruises - pleasure and with children.
George Burns
#39. A married couple that plays cards together is just a fight that hasn't started yet.
George Burns
#40. Love is a lot like a backache. It doesn't show up on x-rays, but you know it's there.
George Burns
#41. I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than most western countries.
George Burns
#43. What actresses do today when they appear on the screen is what they did once upon a time for getting to appear on the screen.
George Burns
#44. If I had taken my doctor's advice and quit smoking when he advised me to, I wouldn't have lived to go to his funeral.
George Burns
#45. Dress simply. If you wear a dinner jacket, don't wear anything else on it ... like lunch or dinner.
George Burns
#46. I thought to myself, 'why not write a bestseller?' In the first place, more people buy them and more people read them. You make more money and it doesn't take any more time to write a bestseller than it does to write a book nobody buys.
George Burns
#47. In those days the best painkiller was ice; it wasn't addictive and it was particularly effective if you poured some whiskey over it.
George Burns
#48. There's an old saying, 'Life begins at forty.' That's silly. Life begins every morning you wake up.
George Burns
#49. I drink coffee with my right hand, and I smoke with my left. But I talk with both hands.
George Burns
#50. The happiest people I know are the ones that are still working. The saddest are the ones who are retired. Very few performers retire on their own. It's usually because no one wants them. Six years ago Sinatra announced his retirement. He's still working.
George Burns
#51. I don't have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down, no problem.
George Burns
#52. I love to sing, and I love to drink scotch. Most people would rather hear me drink scotch.
George Burns
#53. When I was young I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then and I'm labeled senile.
George Burns
#54. Sex can be fun after eighty, after ninety, and after lunch!
George Burns
#55. Fall in love with what you're going to do for a living. To be able to get out of bed and do what you love to do for the rest of the day is beyond words. I'd rather be a failure in something I love than be successful in something I hate.
George Burns
#56. And God said 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.'
George Burns
#57. I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.
George Burns
#59. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
George Burns
#60. You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.
George Burns
#61. I did go to school - my kind of school. When I was a kid I went out ... and you meet people. You talk to them. Anybody says something that makes sense, it stays with you, rubs off on you. That kind of school.
George Burns
#62. No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
George Burns
#63. If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.
George Burns
#64. I smoke cigars because at my age if I don't have something to hang on to I might fall down.
George Burns
#65. It's one of the old show business axioms. No matter how successful you've been, there's always a younger and sexier seal coming along.
George Burns
#66. When I was in Vegas women were throwing their hotel keys at me. But it was after they checked out.
George Burns
#68. When Jack Benny has a party, you not only bring your own scotch, you bring your own rocks.
George Burns
#69. I'm at the age now where just putting my cigar in its holder is a thrill.
George Burns
#70. I'd rather be over the hill than under it.
George Burns
#71. Sex is the Universal Language in which nobody speaks; they don't have to.
George Burns
#72. When asked in his late 90s if his doctor knew he still smoked, Burns said, 'No ... he's dead.'
George Burns
#73. I don't believe in dying. It's been done. I'm working on a new exit. Besides, I can't die now - I'm booked.
George Burns
#74. The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.
George Burns
#75. I never go jogging, it makes me spill my martini.
George Burns
#76. Being an actor is easy, just picture someone in a room and you outside waiting for your cue to go in. Elliot Gould's been trying that for forty years.
George Burns
#78. When I wasn't working, I put the blame directly where it belonged - I blamed my agent. When I didn't have an agent, I spent time looking for a new agent so I would have somebody to blame.
George Burns
#79. When you stop giving and offering something to the rest of the world, it's time to turn out the lights.
George Burns
#80. I would go out with women my age, but there are no women my age.
George Burns
#81. When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.
George Burns
#83. Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
George Burns
#84. I was brought up to respect my elders, so now I don't have to respect anybody.
George Burns
#85. Let me get one thing straight; I'm not an authority on sex, I'm more of a fan. I think sex is nice; no family should be without it. Of course, there are other things that are just as important as sex, like uh ... like uh ... like ... uh ... well, I'll think of it later.
George Burns
#86. I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.
George Burns
#87. Be sure to wear a good cologne, a nice aftershave lotion, and a strong underarm deodorant. And it might be a good idea to wear some clothes, too.
George Burns
#88. My best advice: Fall in love with what you do for a living.
George Burns
#89. She didn't need to go to acting school to learn that the essence of acting is to act like you're not acting.
George Burns
#90. If I paid ten dollars for a cigar, first I'd make love to it, then I'd smoke it.
George Burns
#91. When we played the back end of a horse we always knew that if we worked hard and did a good job we could become the front end.
George Burns
#92. People ask me what I'd most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit.
George Burns
#93. Young. Old. Just words. Inside we feel like our shoe size.
George Burns
#94. I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.
George Burns
#95. If it's a good script I'll do it. And if it's a bad script, and they pay me enough, I'll do it.
George Burns
#96. As long as you're working, you stay young.
George Burns
#97. I can't afford to die; I'd lose too much money.
George Burns
#98. I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm very pleased to be anywhere.
George Burns
#99. I can't understand why I flunked American history. When I was a kid there was so little of it.
George Burns
#100. From Paris we took the Orient Express to Vienna. I must say I was terribly disappointed; nobody was murdered on the train.
George Burns
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