Top 100 Lily Tomlin Quotes
#1. I loved the late Gilda Radner. I love Carol Burnett and Lily Tomlin.
Tracey Ullman
#2. I always just wanted to be a movie actress, like Lily Tomlin or Ruth Gordon. I just imagined myself being in a movie, wearing stylish women's clothing the way I saw Amy Irving wearing it.
Jenny Slate
#3. If I'd had any way of knowing that things were- as Lily Tomlin once said- going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I'm not sure how I would have slept that night.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#4. I grew up idolizing Madeline Kahn and Lily Tomlin and Carol Burnett, Ruth Gordon, Rosalind Russell, Amy Irving, women who were stylish and real actresses who did real work and could not be replaced with anyone else. You cannot cast anyone else in Madeline Kahn's roles.
Jenny Slate
#5. A lot of people live with no apparent means of support. I kind of envy the musicians up there. You're down here, busting your ass in Hollywood, and it's like Lily Tomlin's joke about the rat race - all you prove in the end is that you're a rat.
Kurt Voss
#6. I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." Lily Tomlin
E.C. Sheedy
#7. If you watch [The] Search for Signs of Intelligent Life [in the Universe], or The Incredible Shrinking Woman, or 9 to 5, there is a lot of gender politics at the forefront of Lily Tomlin work, which was kind of thrilling for me to be watching as a 10-, 11-, 12-year-old kid.
Tina Fey
#8. If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?
Lily Tomlin
#9. I always wanted to be something, but now I see I should have been more specific.
Lily Tomlin
#10. Creating characters is just another way to express a type and put that type to use.
Lily Tomlin
#11. No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.
Lily Tomlin
#12. After all, in private, we're all misfits
Lily Tomlin
#13. When we talk to god, it's prayer. When god talks to us, it's schizophrenia.
Lily Tomlin
#14. But there are too many people that make so much money at the cost of lives of other humans and for no reason but to make the money.
Lily Tomlin
#15. There's nothing sadder than getting to the end of your life and saying, 'I didn't do it right'.
Lily Tomlin
#16. I always wondered why somebody didn't do something about that. And then I realized I was somebody.
Lily Tomlin
#17. The larger picture is really to swing people's awareness of what really is moral.
Lily Tomlin
#18. Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination.
Lily Tomlin
#19. I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.
Lily Tomlin
#20. Lady, I do not make up things. That is lies. Lies are not true. But the truth could be made up if yo know how. And that's the truth.
Lily Tomlin
#21. In the depths of the night, fear grips my heart. It paralyzes my mind. But most of all, I feel very, very alone
Lily Tomlin
#22. You know being relevant or coming up with something interesting, funny to say about what's current is just as hard as it might ever be depending on the serendipity of it all.
Lily Tomlin
#24. Many times I sit back and say, 'I can't believe that this is my life!' Other times, I feel self-satisfied. I mean, there's a lot to be proud and thankful for but, nonetheless, it's just a life!
Lily Tomlin
#26. If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest.' I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing.
Lily Tomlin
#27. Sometimes i worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
Lily Tomlin
#28. What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down where you can find it.
Lily Tomlin
#29. I grew up in a time when women didn't really do comedy. You had to be homely, overweight, an old maid, all that. You had to play a stereotype, because very attractive women were not supposed to be funny - because it's powerful; it's a threat.
Lily Tomlin
#30. I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.
Lily Tomlin
#31. Wouldn't it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas.
Lily Tomlin
#32. We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.
Lily Tomlin
#33. I'm not a religious person. I don't have any desire. To me it's imitative of a conventional culture. I'm all for it for anybody. I totally have a free and open feeling about how other humans want to live their lives. It's just not something that has any real significance for me.
Lily Tomlin
#34. God, Jack, it makes you want to go out and convert the whole damn world to homosexuality," she told him. "Just so you can walk down the street with your head up. "Maybe
Lily Tomlin Ann Bannon
#36. I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.
Lily Tomlin
#37. When we speak to God, we call it prayer; when God speaks back, we call it psychosis!
Lily Tomlin
#38. We are people with lives, not consumers with lifestyles.
Lily Tomlin
#39. Sexual freedom and liberation has to be of your own making. I'm stunned when I hear about friends' children, ten or twelve years old giving blow jobs. I just don't like the girls being used or exploited in that way. It's just indiscriminate sexual relating. It's just the isolated things.
Lily Tomlin
#40. 9 to 5 made people aware of equal pay for equal work. It hasn't really happened, but it has come closer.
Lily Tomlin
#42. When I am happy I feel like crying, but when I am sad I don't feel like laughing. I think it is better to be happy; then you get two feelings for the price of one.
Lily Tomlin
#43. No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
Lily Tomlin
#44. What is reality, anyway? Just a collective hunch.
Lily Tomlin
#45. I bought a box of animal crackers, but there was nothing inside. They'd eaten each other.
Lily Tomlin
#46. It's a more ridiculing, divisive humor today.
Lily Tomlin
#47. I wonder what it would be like if we all became what we wanted to be when we grew up? I mean, imagine a world filled with nothing but firemen, cowboys, nurses and ballerinas.
Lily Tomlin
#48. I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.
Lily Tomlin
#49. The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Lily Tomlin
#50. Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Lily Tomlin
#51. If you read a lot of books, you're considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well-viewed!
Lily Tomlin
#52. Language was invented because of the deep human need to complain.
Lily Tomlin
#53. I guess that's one of the reasons that you do it - work all the time - because it's sort of a high to find something that really works.
Lily Tomlin
#54. I have always felt that humor was a wonderful vehicle to let us become connected with each other and ourselves ... I try to portray the similarities and polarities in men and women, so that we
can acknowledge and embrace our collective consciousness.
Lily Tomlin
#55. If I had known what it would be like to have it all - I might have been willing to settle for less.
Lily Tomlin
#56. If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
Lily Tomlin
#57. Growing up in Michigan was fine ... until I realized where I was.
Lily Tomlin
#58. I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle, it's much too confining.
Lily Tomlin
#59. We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.
Lily Tomlin
#60. No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
Lily Tomlin
#61. Did you know, in the entire universe, we are the only intelligent life forms thought to have a Miss Universe contest?
Lily Tomlin
#62. Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then
we elected them.
Lily Tomlin
#63. When I've had a meltdown, people will say to me, "Well, you failed to keep your sense of humor."
Lily Tomlin
#64. I worry about kids today - because of the sexual revolution, they're going to grow up and never know what "dirty" means.
Lily Tomlin
#65. Exercise is for people who can't handle drugs or alcohol.
Lily Tomlin
#66. You can't expect insights, even the big ones, to make you suddenly understand everything. But I figure: Hey it's a step in the right direction if they leave you confused in a deeper way.
Lily Tomlin
#67. I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.
Lily Tomlin
#68. People hire me to create some kind of archetype or some culture type, or something. I guess they accept whatever I come up with.
Lily Tomlin
#69. I was always empathetic with animals. It's a terrible and self-involved point of view that we do something because someone else is exploitable.
Lily Tomlin
#70. If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
Lily Tomlin
#71. Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.
Lily Tomlin
#72. I think my politics are just inclined to be empathetic and humanistic. I grew up with so many different kinds of people with different politics, different religion, no religion, no politics, education, no education, and I was infatuated with all of them.
Lily Tomlin
#73. There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.
Lily Tomlin
#74. We're giving jobs to people who would otherwise be out of work if we weren't exploiting cheap labor.
Lily Tomlin
#75. Does your mind feel more and more like teflon? Nothing sticks to it?
Lily Tomlin
#76. For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.
Lily Tomlin
#77. I was always drawn to more the social-expression-of-culture types.
Lily Tomlin
#78. Truth is, I've always been selling out. The difference is that in the past, I looked like I had integrity because there were no buyers.
Lily Tomlin
#79. I mean yes to act out something or take chances in the performance is one thing. But in terms of a camera, whatever's captured is captured so that's a little more daunting.
Lily Tomlin
#80. The road to success is always under construction
Lily Tomlin
#81. Even when I'm being funny, I'm deadly serious.
Lily Tomlin
#82. What I appreciate is acknowledging to the audience that I think they have brains.
Lily Tomlin
#83. Did you know, throughout the cosmos they found intelligent life forms that play to play? We are the only ones that play to win. Explains why we have more than our share of losers.
Lily Tomlin
#84. To me, "sexual freedom" means freedom from having to have sex.
Lily Tomlin
#85. I never officially came out in any kind of really public way. I just always lived very simply and openly, but the press has never made a big fuss about me or said anything to me.
Lily Tomlin
#86. For fast-acting relief from stress, try slowing down.
Lily Tomlin
#87. Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
Lily Tomlin
#88. Being a New Yorker is never having to say you are sorry.
Lily Tomlin
#89. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
Lily Tomlin
#90. Maybe if people started to listen, history would stop repeating itself.
Lily Tomlin
#91. If you have a dog or a cat, you know how developed they can be. How sensitive, how aware. They suffer. We all do.
Lily Tomlin
#92. Just remember, we're all in this alone.
Lily Tomlin
#93. I think life is perverse. It can be beautiful, but it won't.
Lily Tomlin
#94. Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.
Lily Tomlin
#95. You are what you think ... geez, that's frightening ...
Lily Tomlin
#96. The phone company handles 84 billion calls a year-everything from kings, queens, and presidents to the scum of the earth.
Lily Tomlin
#97. Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
Lily Tomlin
#98. Every day I read the newspapers, and no matter how cynical I get, it's imposssible to keep up.
Lily Tomlin
#99. You don't really need to get married, but marriage is awfully nice. Everybody I know who got married, they say it really makes a difference. They feel very, very happy about it.
Lily Tomlin
#100. What if it's boring - or if it's not boring, it might be too revealing, or worse, it might be too revealing and still be boring.
Lily Tomlin
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