Lily Tomlin famous quotes

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspirational #Funny #Witty

When I've had a meltdown, people will say to me, "Well, you failed to keep your sense of humor."
-- Lily Tomlin

#People #Sense Of Humor #Meltdowns

If trying harder doesn't work, try softer.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Trying #Harder

Having a real public outlet is how you imprint something for yourself. It's just a matter of timing. It's like you've marked your territory.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Real #Territory #Matter

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

#Nurse #Would Be #World

I wanted to be a stage actress. I wanted to be a New York actress and have a community with other actors. I didn't want to get famous; I always thought getting famous was a drag on you.
-- Lily Tomlin

#New York #Community #Actors

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Education #Appreciation #Teacher

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. You know you can't go back next week and fix it. Whereas in a live audience you know it's so in the moment and you just go with what's happening. First of all you never have to see it again so you don't know if you were really fulfilling it or not.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Cameras #Littles #Next

For fast-acting relief try slowing down.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspirational #Breakup #Stress

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

#Religious #Real #Feelings

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Funny #Book #Communication

And yet humanity is so not evolved that how can you expect anything absolutely major to happen? Look how long, we move ahead in technology, how much do we move ahead in morality or emotion? We move ahead so minimally, minimally, minimally.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Moving #Technology #Long

I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle, it's much too confining.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Witty #Reality #Lifestyle

If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Book #Watches #Tvs

I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspiring #I Realized

Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

To me, "sexual freedom" means freedom from having to have sex.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Sex #Mean #Feminist

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Funny #Success #Congratulations

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Fun #Humorous #Skins

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Communication #Thinking #Complaining

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

#Thinking #Two #Laughing

We are all in this together, by ourselves.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Unity #Together

We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Witty #Sex #Believe

I feel some part of me can wake up and be very existential and the next day wake up and be sort of in love with the universe.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Wake Up #Next #Existential

I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspirational #Funny #Thinking

The best mind-altering drug is the truth.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Truth #Drug #Mind

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Love #Life #Relationship

Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Funny #Leadership #Stress

Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Imagination #Sometimes #Figments

Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Country #Honesty #Work

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspirational #Funny #Beauty

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Cynical #Matter #Enough

Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspiring #Fall #Failure

If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?
-- Lily Tomlin

#Love #Funny Relationship #Answers

Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Laughing #Survival #Should

Maybe if people started to listen, history would stop repeating itself.
-- Lily Tomlin

#People #History

You are what you think ... geez, that’s frightening....
-- Lily Tomlin

#Thinking #Frightening

What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down where you can find it.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Golf

If I had known what it would be like to have it all - I might have been willing to settle for less.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Funny #Sarcastic #Eyeglasses

The formula for water is H2O. Is the formula for an ice cube H2O squared?
-- Lily Tomlin

#Ice #Water #Cubes

I worry about kids today - because of the sexual revolution, they're going to grow up and never know what "dirty" means.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Growing Up #Dirty #Mean

I try to be cynical, but it's so hard to keep up.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Cynical #Trying

The start to a better world is the belief that it is possible.
-- Lily Tomlin

#World #Belief

I think life is perverse. It can be beautiful, but it won't.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Beautiful #Thinking #Life Is

Being a New Yorker is never having to say you are sorry.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Sorry

Did you know, in the entire universe, we are the only intelligent life forms thought to have a Miss Universe contest?
-- Lily Tomlin

#Intelligent #Missing #Form

Even when I'm being funny, I'm deadly serious.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Serious #Comedy

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

#Intelligent #Winning #Play

My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again. They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape. The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Crazy #Unique #Thinking

Suddenly I burst into song: 'Awe, sweet mystery of life, at last I found thee...' And I felt so good inside and my heart felt so full, I decided I would set time aside each day to do awe-robics. Because at the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life that you don't understand, you are closer to understanding it all than at any other time.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Song #Sweet #Heart

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

#Heart #Night #Solitude

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
-- Lily Tomlin

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

#Confused #Hey #Way

There's nothing sadder than getting to the end of your life and saying, 'I didn't do it right'.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Meaningful #Ends

Language was invented because of the deep human need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Complaining #Needs #Language

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

#Thinking #Ideas #Laughing

The phone company handles 84 billion calls a year-everything from kings, queens, and presidents to the scum of the earth.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Kings #Queens #Phones

No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Cynical #Matter

There will be sex after death, we just won't be able to feel it.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Love #Sex #Able

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

#Funny #Interesting #Serendipity

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

#What If #Might #Boring

I was always drawn to more the social-expression-of-culture types.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Expression #Culture #Social

If you can't be direct, why be?
-- Lily Tomlin

#Direct

What I appreciate is acknowledging to the audience that I think they have brains.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Thinking #Appreciate #Brain

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Funny #Humorous #Technology

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

#People #Cost #Reason

I guess if people couldn't profit from war I don't think there would be war.
-- Lily Tomlin

#War #Thinking #People

The road to success is always under construction.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Inspiring #Success #Congratulations

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

#Mean #Cameras #Littles

Does your mind feel more and more like teflon? Nothing sticks to it?
-- Lily Tomlin

#Mind #Doe #Teflon

Remember we're all in this alone.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Loneliness #Being Alone #Feeling Lonely

We are people with lives, not consumers with lifestyles.
-- Lily Tomlin

#People #Lifestyle #Consumers

Infinity is just time on an ego trip.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Ego #Infinity

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

#Integrity #Past #Differences

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

#Mean #Cowboy #Nurse

Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
-- Lily Tomlin

#Names #Feet #Special

Exercise is for people who can't handle drugs or alcohol.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Exercise #People #Alcohol

Well, if I can be of any help at all, you are in worse trouble than I thought.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Helping #Trouble #Wells

Growing up in Michigan was fine...until I realized where I was.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Growing Up #Michigan #Fine

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

#Lying #Made

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

#Reason

Creating characters is just another way to express a type and put that type to use.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Character #Creating #Use

After all, in private, we're all misfits
-- Lily Tomlin

#Misfits

I especially love 'Web Therapy' and I did 'Eastbound and Down' too. I had a lot of fun doing that.
-- Lily Tomlin

#Fun #Therapy

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

#Men #Trying #Consciousness