Dave Barry Quotes

#1. Newspaper columnist Dave Barry once wrote that the motto of the wedding industry is, 'Money can't buy you happiness, so you might as well give your money to us.

Denise Fields

#2. Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. - DAVE BARRY

Timothy Ferriss

#3. I think I realized that Dave Barry was funnier than I'll ever be, and he made no attempt to make any actual points. He had a general libertarian point of view, but in general, he just liked to make jokes.

Joel Stein

#4. This is the funniest book I've ever held in my hands.
Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning humorist and author says about Radical Sabbatical

Dave Barry

#5. But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny.

Jonathan Franzen

#6. As far as my memory being reliable, at the risk of sounding like some sort of gorgeous two-headed monster with the voices of Dave Barry and Erma Bombeck, I do think that women, like elephants, remember everything and love peanuts.

Julie Klausner

#7. Ridley Pearson also plays bass guitar and sings with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band made up of such successful authors as Amy Tan, Stephen King, and Dave Barry-a band that, according to Barry, "plays music as well as Metallica writes novels".

Otto Penzler

#8. And it ain't a man, thought Slank.

Dave Barry

#9. I like golf because you can be really terrible at it, and still not look much dorkier than anybody else.

Dave Barry

#10. You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa.

Dave Barry

#11. Too many rocks in the mountains.

Dave Barry

#12. Never lick a steak knife.

Dave Barry

#13. Trails need to be reconstructed. Please avoid building trails that go uphill.

Dave Barry

#14. Technology is constantly improving our lives. Look at the cellular telephone. Just ten years ago, virtually nobody was able to get into a car crash caused by trying to steer and dial at the same time; today, people do this all the time.

Dave Barry

#15. Simply by eliminating description, the screenwriter can work his way through the entire plot in a single morning, leaving the afternoon free for screenwriter leisure activities such as drugs.

Dave Barry

#16. People are afraid to own their own homes. People are afraid their own government will catch them fixing their houses.

Dave Barry

#17. By today's beauty standards, of course, Marilyn Monroe was an oil tanker.

Dave Barry

#18. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

Dave Barry

#19. I always wanted to write when I was a kid; it just never occurred to me that you could have a job that didn't involve any actual work ... I felt it would be fun to have a job like that where you could make stuff up and be irresponsible and get paid for it.

Dave Barry

#20. Europeans, like some Americans, drive on the right side of the road, except in England, where they drive on both sides of the road; Italy, where they drive on the sidewalk; and France, where if necessary they will follow you right into the hotel lobby.

Dave Barry

#21. Barry Bonds is outspoken. I think that the people of Pittsburgh felt, it's a syndrome of you've got to apologize for being successful if you're successful (as well as) black and outspoken.

Dave Parker

#22. Because," Leonard said, "light overcomes darkness. A tiny match can illuminate the darkest room. As long as there is some light somewhere in the universe you can be defeated.

Dave Barry

#23. This (America) is a land of rich diversity, from the towering skyscrapers of Manhatan all the way to the towering mounds of garbage piled up next to the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan.

Dave Barry

#24. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

Dave Barry

#25. SAT tests are designed by huge panels of experts in education and psychology who work for years to design tests in which not one single question measures any bit of knowledge that anyone might actually need in the real world. We should applaud kids for getting lower scores.

Dave Barry

#26. European toilet paper is made from the same material that Americans use for roofing, which is why Europeans tend to remain standing throughout soccer matches.

Dave Barry

#27. I guess nobody assumes anybody is a libertarian. It's a more complex political discussion than most people are used to, to explain why you think the way you do about public education or drug laws, and why it's not as simple as being for or against something.

Dave Barry

#28. 33 percent agreeing with the statement that the world is controlled by a giant invisible telepathic clam named Ronaldo.

Dave Barry

#29. Like all writers, my greatest inspiration, my ultimate muse, is a deadline.

Dave Barry

#30. In one case, a group of innocent American tourists was taken on a tour bus through a country the members later described as "either France or Sweden" and subjected to three days of looking at old, dirty buildings in cities where it was not possible to get a cheeseburger.

Dave Barry

#31. [American tax laws] are constantly changing as our elected representatives seek new ways to ensure that whatever tax advice we receive is incorrect.

Dave Barry

#32. Infiniti ads are part of an exciting new trend called "Advertising Whose Sole Purpose Is to Irritate You."

Dave Barry

#33. I've never been struck by lightning as far as I know, so the Higher Power is treating me as well as even those people who love him very much.

Dave Barry

#34. Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of tenative agreements ...

Dave Barry

#35. Back then, the entire Internet consisted of two slow, boxcar-sized UNIVAC computers about 50 feet apart, connected by a wire. It would take one of these computers an entire day to send an email to the other one, which would immediately delete it, because it was a Viagra ad.

Dave Barry

#36. I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that, like most books, it had too many words.

Dave Barry

#37. Miami drivers will attempt to pass you inside a car wash.

Dave Barry

#38. English history consists largely of royal people getting their heads chopped off ... Needless to say, this brand of history was a hit with our son.

Dave Barry

#39. Sometimes you panic and find yourself emitting remarks so profoundly inane that you would be embarrassed to say them to your dog. Your dog would look at you and think to itself, 'I may lick myself in public, but I'd never say anything as stupid as that.'

Dave Barry

#40. I can snap your spine like a toothpick.

Dave Barry

#41. Once again, we come to the holiday season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.

Dave Barry

#42. I hate rap music, which to me sounds like a bunch of angry men shouting, possibly because the person who was supposed to provide them with a melody never showed up.

Dave Barry

#43. Remember how he handled the Iran-contra Never Ending Scandal from Hell? He went on national television, the President of the United States, and said it wasn't his fault, because he was not aware, at the time, of what his foreign policy was.

Dave Barry

#44. You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.

Dave Barry

#45. Why can't Americans do their own taxes? Because the federal Tax Code is out of control, that's why. It's gigantic and insanely complex, and it gets worse all the time. Nobody has ever read the whole thing. IRS workers are afraid to go into the same ROOM with it.

Dave Barry

#46. The objective is not so much to walk your dog, as it is to empty him.

Dave Barry

#47. It is important to be nice. But sometimes niceness can be misconstrued as weak. Should we be nice to everybody? Should we be nice only when others are nice to us? Here are some interesting views about being nice. Read these nice quotes and turn on your niceness.

Dave Barry

#48. Never allow a child to spend all of his allowance. Insist that he set aside a certain amount of money every week and put it in a safe place, where you can get it if you need to buy beer.

Dave Barry

#49. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

Dave Barry

#50. Sign at a Kentucky appliance store: Don't kill your wife. Let our washing machine do the dirty work.

Dave Barry

#51. I find myself having these conversations where I go ... You know, the guy, in that place. The guy in the place with the thing, you know. And it becomes this game of charades. And then finally, we realize that I mean the Pope.

Dave Barry

#52. We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires.

Dave Barry

#53. See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

Dave Barry

#54. But if I hadn't shoved you off the boat back there,you'd be lost at sea now,wouldn't you? We'd all be lost! So thanks to me you're all standing on land.
(Pirates, its a good thing they're idiots)

Dave Barry

#55. Recently I began to feel this void in my life, even after meals, and I said to myself, "Dave, all you do with your spare time is sit around and drink beer. You need a hobby." So I got a hobby. I make beer.

Dave Barry

#56. All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow.

Dave Barry

#57. Motto of the U.S. airline industry - "We're Hoping to Have a Motto Announcement in About an Hour."

Dave Barry

#58. The greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison Edison's first major invention, in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented.

Dave Barry

#59. You can use the Internet to find out, from anywhere on the planet: exactly how much coffee is in a certain coffee machine at Cambridge University in England; exactly how many sodas are available in certain vending machines at certain major universities; and much, much more.

Dave Barry

#60. If the people in Europe are SOOOOOO smart, how come so many of them can't seem to locate the deodorant, huh?

Dave Barry

#61. DNA is an abbreviation for deoxyribonucleicantidisestablishmentarianism, a complex string of syllables.

Dave Barry

#62. You should never pick up a newspaper when you're feeling good, because every newspaper has a special department, called the Bummer Desk, which is responsible for digging up depressing front-page stories.

Dave Barry

#63. A small deer came into my camp and stole my bag of pickles. Is there a way I can get reimbursed? Please call.

Dave Barry

#64. As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons.

Dave Barry

#65. A short distance away is the Tidal Basin, ringed by cherry trees that every year produce flowers, an event to which Washingtonians react as though it were the Second Coming of Christ.

Dave Barry

#66. We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon.

Dave Barry

#67. The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear safety glasses.

Dave Barry

#68. The central point of this final chapter is that - follow my logic carefully here - unless you die, you will continue to get older. (It's insights like this that separate the professional book author from the person with a real job.)

Dave Barry

#69. Although it was constructed in 1536, the New York subway system boasts an annual maintenance budget of nearly $8, currently stolen, and it does a remarkable job of getting New Yorkers from Point A to an indeterminate location somewhere in the tunnel leading to point B.

Dave Barry

#70. We have always had dogs, and they have faithfully performed many valuable services for us, such as: 1. Peeing on everything. 2. When we're driving in our car, alerting us that we have passed another dog by barking real loud in our ears for the next 114 miles. 3. Trying to kill the Avon lady.

Dave Barry

#71. Hardware: This is the part of the computer that stops working when you spill beer on it.

Dave Barry

#72. They sport haircuts that were apparently administered by a blind heroin addict in the men's room of a Bulgarian disco in 1978.

Dave Barry

#73. It takes a minimum of six people, working in close harmony, to successfully flush a nautical toilet. That's why those old ships carried such large crews.

Dave Barry

#74. During the warm season (August 8 and 9), Maine is a true vacation paradise, offering visitors a chance to jump into crystal-clear mountain lakes and see if they can get back out again before their bodily tissue is frozen as solid as a supermarket turkey.

Dave Barry

#75. Found a smoldering cigarette left by a horse.

Dave Barry

#76. His body rigid with terror as he waited for the savages to something horrible to him - bash his head with clubs, or stab him with spears, or ...
... or tap him on the shoulder.

Dave Barry

#77. The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you.

Dave Barry

#78. Millions of Americans own dogs, because they are good-natured, simple, and easily amused. I am referring here to the Americans. The dogs are not exactly Mensa members either, but they definitely make better pets than tropical fish.

Dave Barry

#79. Everybody in New York, including police horses, dresses fashionably, and whenever I'm there, even in my sharpest funeral-quality suit with no visible ketchup stains, I feel as though I'm wearing a Hefty trash bag. And it's last year's Hefty trash bag.

Dave Barry

#80. AARP is a large and powerful organization, similar to the Mafia but more concerned about dietary fiber.

Dave Barry

#81. You could be Charles Manson, or Hitler, or even a lawyer who advertises on television, and your dog will still think you're the greatest thing ever. This tells you something very important about dogs: They are not very bright.

Dave Barry

#82. As a professional journalist, I have always been fascinated by people who appear to have even more spare time than I do.

Dave Barry

#83. On behalf of the newspaper industry I wish to announce some changes we're making to serve you better. When I say 'serve you better,' I mean 'increase our profits.' We newspapers are very big on profits these days. We're a business, just like any other business, except that we employ English majors.

Dave Barry

#84. That got her up on stage pretty quick, and she sang a song, which was in Spanish, so I don't know what it was about, except she seemed to be singing it mainly to Sharisse and it had a word that sounded like "poota" in it a lot.

Dave Barry

#85. There is a very fine line between hobby and mental illness.

Dave Barry

#86. There's an old saying among scientific guys: "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, ideally by dropping a cement truck on them from a crane."

Dave Barry

#87. I live in Miami, which can be a dangerous place, with a segment of the population capable of horrific acts of violence. And those are the police. The criminals are even worse.

Dave Barry

#88. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.

Dave Barry

#89. UNIVAC: a device, which contained 20,000 vacuum tubes, occupied 1,500 square feet and weighed 40 tons; there was also a laptop version weighing 27 tons.

Dave Barry

#90. Remember that being offended is not the same thing as being right.

Dave Barry

#91. I hate to speak for the whole society, but I will. I'm a journalist, it's my job. There's been something of a reaction against political correctness. Needless to say, the government hasn't caught up yet.

Dave Barry

#92. For most celebrities, the biggest meal of the day is toothpaste (they use reduced-fat Crest).

Dave Barry

#93. Roy Blount, who is the funniest person I know, journeys deep into the dark heart of humor and brings back a wonderfully insightful, superbly crafted song of the soul that had me laughing and crying too

Dave Barry

#94. Modern cyberspace is a deadly festering swamp, teeming with dangerous programs such as 'viruses,' 'worms,' 'Trojan horses' and 'licensed Microsoft software' that can take over your computer and render it useless.

Dave Barry

#95. I don't know what you can possibly do for less than $50 to have somebody come in your house.

Dave Barry

#96. In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Dave Barry

#97. You can put suspenders on a salamander, but it still won't make waffles. See what I mean? That sentence makes absolutely no sense, but I got paid to write it. It's printed right here in a published book!

Dave Barry

#98. You know how on the evening news they always tell you that the stock market is up in active trading, or off in moderate trading, or trading in mixed activity, or whatever. Well, who gives a

Dave Barry

#99. He stepped forward, and as he did the left side of his coconut brassiere slipped down, revealing his left nipple. He shoved the coconut back into place. He didn't want to look unprofessional.

Dave Barry

#100. Hobbies of any kind are boring except to people who have the same hobby. This is also true of religion, although you will not find me saying so in print.

Dave Barry