Top 100 Quotes About Johnny Carson
#1. Magic is the oldest part of the show business profession. It can now be used as a forward-thinking tool to build a child's confidence. It has been an amazing part in many entertainers' lives, including Steve Martin and the late Johnny Carson.
Criss Angel
#3. It's funny, I remember doing the Johnny Carson show, and, uh, I couldn't afford my rent.
Natalie Merchant
#4. After my 1985 appearance on 'The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,' I was wooed by producers in Hollywood, who told me they wanted to turn my act into a sitcom.
Roseanne Barr
#5. As a kid, I always wanted to be Carol Burnett or Johnny Carson. I love to chat and entertain.
Caroline Rhea
#6. I've performed on 'The Tonight Show' with both Johnny Carson and Jay Leno, but not at the same time.
Thomas F. Wilson
#7. I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-'60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn't the night before.
Dick Cavett
#8. By a twist of fate rather than anything approaching journalistic enterprise, I did the last major interview with Johnny Carson.
Tom Shales
#9. Privately I think that I'm not really somebody who has a network television show. Celebrities are other people - Johnny Carson and Sylvester Stallone. I'm just a kid trying to make a living is the way I feel.
David Letterman
#10. I was on the Johnny Carson show, I believe 114 or 104 times. And aside from those times on the air, I never spoke to him. I never met him.
Tony Randall
#11. I can be on the Tonight Show, but not with Johnny [Carson]. He uses my name in his monologue all the time.
Paul Reubens
#12. The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.
Don Rickles
#13. There really is no Johnny Carson anymore. There is no one place a comedian can appear and explode.
Tom Leykis
#14. NBC. How could I not? I grew up watching Seinfeld, Johnny Carson, Late Night with David Letterman, and reruns of The Mothers-in-Law.
Tina Fey
#15. I always thought Johnny Carson was just brilliant, and I used to watch him and all the comics that would be on the show every night - and I'd dream about it being me.
Steven Wright
#16. I got my style from a lot of different people, even my style of reading, even Johnny Carson inspired me.
Patti Smith
#17. I have this coat that I got in a nefarious deal years ago. It's a Johnny Carson coat, and I've had it remade three times. It's mine all the time. Carson was a real man, and I thought, 'Coats for real men by real men? I'm in.'
Josh Homme
#18. There's only one critic whose opinion I really value, in the final analysis: Johnny Carson. I have never needed any entourage standing around bolstering my ego. I'm secure. I know exactly who and what I am. I don't need to be told. I make no apologies for being the way I am.
Johnny Carson
#19. He was a very private person, but then, you know, he belonged to the whole United States. The United States thought they owned Johnny Carson.
Doc Severinsen
#20. 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
#21. I was a big fan of how Johnny Carson hosted awards shows. Dick Cavett, as well, I think did a really great job of providing a nice blend of comedy, wit and class.
Neil Patrick Harris
#22. In Los Angeles, I had the good fortune of anchoring the news right before Johnny Carson came on, so to see him, the Hollywood stars watched me first.
Tom Brokaw
#23. Johnny Carson was a mean-spirited human being. And there are people that he has hurt that people will never know about. And for some reason, at some point, he decided to turn that kind of negative attention toward me. And I refused to have it.
Wayne Newton
#24. The Tonight Show didn't seem like an actual job that you could have. All you remember is you watched Johnny Carson, and you never thought he would retire.
Jimmy Fallon
#25. Out all of these zillions of letters, one of the first ones that came was, as it turned out from Johnny Carson within the last five or six weeks of his life. I had worked with him. He lost a son who had worked for me.
Dick Ebersol
#26. Johnny Carson started the jokes about me and Marlin in his monologues.
Jim Fowler
#27. I signed contracts when I didn't know what that meant. I thought I'd get residuals off of the shows I've been on: History Channel, Discovery, Dateline, Johnny Carson, etc. It's the only regret I have in life. If I got residuals, I wouldn't be shucking oysters now, though I do love my job.
Steve Trotter
#28. I've always been a fan of a Johnny Carson because he was so great with an audience and not afraid of self-deprecating humor.
Vince Vaughn
#29. According to Johnny Carson, I was the guy who Marlon sent out to do all the dirty work.
Jim Fowler
#30. I remember meeting the likes of Johnny Carson and Jimmy Stewart for the first time and being completely starstruck.
Kevin Spacey
#31. When I was a kid, you would tune in to 'The Tonight Show' before you went to sleep. Johnny Carson. A big treat. I know it's a privilege of mine to be able to be in people's homes. So I hope I make everyone proud, including my parents, and do a good job in this.
Jimmy Fallon
#32. I've learned from my dealings with Johnny Carson that no matter what kind of friendship you think you have with people you're working with, when the chips are down, it's all about business.
Joan Rivers
#33. Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson. Richard Nixon did, famously, go on 'Laugh In' in 1968, but as a candidate; and to his credit, he rued the day and hated every second of it.
Christopher Buckley
#34. In 1980, when I graduated from high school, my goal was to be on 'The Tonight Show' with Johnny Carson at least once before our ten-year class reunion. Our class reunion was in June of 1990, and I was on 'The Tonight Show' in April 1990, so I made it by a few months.
Jeff Dunham
#35. I still have the shirt I wore my first time on Johnny Carson's show. Only now I use it as a tablecloth at dinner parties. It was very blousy.
Ellen DeGeneres
#36. 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
#37. People are hypocrites. If you ask them what they want to see on TV, they'll tell you they want better quality programming. And then what do they watch? 'Gilligan's Island.'
Johnny Carson
#38. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace.
Johnny Carson
#39. They say atomic rad-i-ation can hurt your reproductive organs. My answer is, so can a hockey stick. But we don't stop building them.
Johnny Carson
#40. I think students ought to have the right to protest, but not to the point of anarchy.
Johnny Carson
#41. I have no use for eight houses, 88 cars and 500 suits. I can't eat but one steak at a time. I don't want but one woman. It's silly to have as one's sole object in life just making money, accumulating wealth.
Johnny Carson
#42. You become successful, the way I see it, only if you're good enough to deliver what the public enjoys. If you're not, you won't have any audience; so the performer really has more to do with his success than the public does.
Johnny Carson
#43. I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself.
Johnny Carson
#44. Your chances of getting hit by lighting go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say Storms suck!!
Johnny Carson
#45. I feel the one sensible thing you can do is try to live in a way that pleases you. If you don't hurt anybody else, what you do is your own business.
Johnny Carson
#46. Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?
Johnny Carson
#47. I couldn't care less what anybody says about me. I live my life, especially my personal life, strictly for myself ... Whatever you do, you're going to be criticized. I feel the one sensible thing you can do is try to live in a way that pleases you.
Johnny Carson
#48. I don't run with anybody's herd. I don't like crowds. I don't like going to fancy places. I don't like the whole nightclub scene. Cocktail parties drive me mad. So I do my job and I stay away from the rest of it.
Johnny Carson
#49. I owe one thing to my public - the best performance I can give.
Johnny Carson
#51. Air Canada. That's a good name for a Canadian airline.
Johnny Carson
#52. Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die.
Johnny Carson
#53. NBC's a little jealous of CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer. They want to get a reporter with a macho-sounding name too, so they're changing Irving R. Levine's name to Scud Shrapnel.
Johnny Carson
#54. I know you've been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvelous. It must be very inexpensive.
Johnny Carson
#55. Like their parents, kids flock to see James Bond and Derek Flint movies - outrageously antiheroic heroes who break all the taboos, making attractive the very things the kids are told they shouldn't do themselves.
Johnny Carson
#56. Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.
Johnny Carson
#57. New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.
Johnny Carson
#58. Democracy means free television, not good television, but free.
Johnny Carson
#59. George Burns has been on my show twenty or thirty times, or maybe more. How can you turn down a guy that age?
Johnny Carson
#60. Find me any performer anywhere who isn't egocentric. You'd better believe you're good, or you've got no business being out there.
Johnny Carson
#61. The Hollywood tradition I like best is called sucking up to the stars.
Johnny Carson
#62. Entertainment is like any other major industry; it's cold, big business. The business end wants to know one thing: Can you do the job? If you can, you're in, you're made; if you can't, you're out.
Johnny Carson
#63. Never ask your wife if she still hears from her old pimp.
Johnny Carson
#64. Never marry a girl named 'Marie' who used to be known as 'Murray'.
Johnny Carson
#65. I am one of the lucky people in the world; I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it.
Johnny Carson
#66. Happiness is a tiger in your tank and a pussycat in your back seat.
Johnny Carson
#67. I play my life straight - the way I see it. I'm grateful to audiences for watching me and for enjoying what I do - but I'm not one of those who believe that a successful entertainer is made by the public, as is so often said.
Johnny Carson
#68. I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.
Johnny Carson
#69. As you all know by now, this is the 51st annual Academy Awards. Two hours of sparkling entertainment spread out over a four-hour show.
Johnny Carson
#70. I hear that whenever someone in the White House tells a lie, Nixon gets a royalty.
Johnny Carson
#71. I loved the towns I grew up in as a boy, and after I became a celebrity, I went back several times. I would have had the time of my life seeing the old places and the old faces again, but the attitude of those same people was, "I guess you're so big we bore you now."
Johnny Carson
#72. The vast majority of us don't want to face the fact that we're in the middle of a sweeping social revolution. In sex. In spiritual values. In opposition to wars no one wants. In opposition to government big-brotherhood. In civil rights. In basic human goals. They're all facets of a general upheaval.
Johnny Carson
#73. The closest thing to Roseanne Barr's singing the national anthem was my cat being neutered.
Johnny Carson
#74. Who cares what entertainers on the air think about international affairs? Who would want to hear me about Vietnam? They can hear all they want from people with reason to be respected as knowledgeable.
Johnny Carson
#75. Maybe we should hold the next [Olympic] games in Afghanistan and hope the Soviets pull out of that one too.
Johnny Carson
#76. The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.
Johnny Carson
#77. I'm an entertainer; I try to give the public what it wants while I'm on the screen, and I'm completely sincere about it. If I don't happen to be a laughing boy off the screen, that doesn't make me a hypocrite or a phony.
Johnny Carson
#78. I don't think it's you that changes with success - it's the people around you who change. Because of your new status, they change in relation to you.
Johnny Carson
#79. Whatever you do, you're going to be criticized.
Johnny Carson
#80. I can empathize with President [George Bush]. I know what it feels like having a young guy waiting around for you to keel over.
Johnny Carson
#81. Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead.
Johnny Carson
#82. If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.
Johnny Carson
#83. I can't go anywhere without being bugged by somebody. I'd love to just hike out down the street, or drop in a restaurant, or wander in the park, or take my kids somewhere without collecting a trail of people. But I can't.
Johnny Carson
#84. Adults ask questions as a child does. When you stop wondering, you might as well put your rocker on the front porch and call it a day.
Johnny Carson
#85. Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whiskey, and a dog to eat the rare steak.
Johnny Carson
#86. Happiness is seeing the muscular lifeguard all the girls were admiring leave the beach hand in hand with another muscular lifeguard.
Johnny Carson
#87. I see a lot of new faces. Especially on the old faces.
Johnny Carson
#88. I wouldn't have the slightest interest in running for public office. I'd rather make jokes about politicians than become one of them.
Johnny Carson
#89. If life was fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators dead.
Johnny Carson
#90. Pie throwing is kind of a lost art, and although it may be a rather rudimentary, burlesque humor, there's something inherently funny about taking a pie in the face, under the right conditions.
Johnny Carson
#91. We have two kinds of air: regular and chunky style.
Johnny Carson
#92. That would have been a great ticket, Reagan and Ford - an actor and a stuntman.
Johnny Carson
#93. I am taking the applause sign home, putting it in the bedroom.
Johnny Carson
#94. If God didn't want man to hunt, He wouldn't have given us plaid shirts.
Johnny Carson
#95. As long as I don't commit any crimes, you have no right to judge me except by my performance as a professional. On that level, you're welcome to think whatever you want about me.
Johnny Carson
#96. It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, "if you want it your way, cook it yourself."
Johnny Carson
#97. People pay more to be entertained that educated
Johnny Carson
#98. Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.
Johnny Carson
#99. I've worked ever since I was a kid with a two-bit kit of magic tricks trying to improve my skills at entertaining whatever public I had - and to make myself ready, whenever the breaks came, to entertain a wider and more demanding public.
Johnny Carson
#100. I have an ego like anybody else, but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time.
Johnny Carson
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