Dick Cavett famous quotes

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
-- Dick Cavett

#Funny #Humor #Causes

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
-- Dick Cavett

#Inspirational #Funny #Business

If your parents never had children, chances are... neither will you.
-- Dick Cavett

#Inspirational #Funny #Children

Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself.
-- Dick Cavett

#Dirty #Naughty #Mind

It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.
-- Dick Cavett

#Listening #Want #Favourite

I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious. The only problem is that an hour later you're hungry for power.
-- Dick Cavett

#Chinese #Problem #Hungry

Meryl Streep belongs on anybodys list of greats.
-- Dick Cavett

#Lists

Its fun for me to go on other folks talk shows. When youve endured the ups and downs and tensions and pitfalls of hosting, being a guest is a piece of angel food.
-- Dick Cavett

#Fun #Angel #Pitfalls

Lawyers work hard and, like us, they're human, many of them.
-- Dick Cavett

#Hard Work #Lawyer #Humans

The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex.
-- Dick Cavett

#Sex #Police #Unruly

It was well after college that I learned about depression. I got my first job for Jack Paar. I realized I was sleeping 14 hours a day and just living for the Paar show.
-- Dick Cavett

#Jobs #Sleep #College

My IQ is somewhere between Spiro Agnew's and Albert Einstein's.
-- Dick Cavett

I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants.
-- Dick Cavett

#Practice #Ideas #Chocolate

Music bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart. I wish my life had more of it.
-- Dick Cavett

#Heart #Brain #Wish

Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed.
-- Dick Cavett

#Tvs #Subtle #Sinister

In the main, ghosts are said to be forlorn and generally miserable, if not downright depressed. The jolly ghost is rare.
-- Dick Cavett

#Ghost #Miserable #Forlorn

Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy's show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen.
-- Dick Cavett

#Mean #Judging #Tvs

I don't see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty - and evaporating quickly.
-- Dick Cavett

#Wise #Glasses #Half

I'm not freakishly short. I had, on my show, used shortness as a joke subject; it didn't really bother me.
-- Dick Cavett

#Used #Bother #Shows

I've actually gotten so I don't associate television with entertainment very much.
-- Dick Cavett

#Television #Entertainment

I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.
-- Dick Cavett

#Teacher #Sorry #Home

I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg.
-- Dick Cavett

#Hindenburg #Size #Comedy

I'm the only talk show host, I think, if there's such a category in, what's called, the book of records, to have a guest die while we were taping the show, yeah.
-- Dick Cavett

#Book #Thinking #Records

I don't feel old. I feel like a young man that has something wrong with him.
-- Dick Cavett

#Men #Young #Feels

Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.
-- Dick Cavett

#Suicide #Littles #Irony

The Nixon administration kept a nasty eye on our show... Cops would come by - often just in time to see the act they wanted to see.
-- Dick Cavett

#Eye #Administration #Nasty

Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the man handling it knows what he is doing.
-- Dick Cavett

#Men #People #Assuming

Once I left out what I then considered my best line because there was a suspected column rat in the house.
-- Dick Cavett

#House #Lines #Rats

I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests' books.
-- Dick Cavett

#Book #Intellectual #Trying

Years have passed since I have set foot in a comedy club. If the comic is doing badly it's painful, and if the comic is doing brilliantly, it's extremely painful.
-- Dick Cavett

#Pain #Feet #Years

To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.
-- Dick Cavett

#Intellectual #Labels #Misunderstanding

The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it.
-- Dick Cavett

#Writing #People #Able

Radio, which was a much better medium than television will ever be, was easy and pleasant to listen to. Your mind filled automatically with images.
-- Dick Cavett

#Mind #Television #Radio

I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy.
-- Dick Cavett

#Block #Writing #Giving

If (O.J. Simpson) is acquitted, I will renounce my citizenship. And if I converse with him at a cocktail party, I will say, 'Well, there are so many people here who haven't murdered anyone. I think I'll go talk to them.' I'll also riot.
-- Dick Cavett

#Party #Thinking #People

I think I'd be pretty easy to write for.
-- Dick Cavett

#Writing #Thinking #Easy

I don't think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience's reaction is from another.
-- Dick Cavett

#Thinking #Surprise #Reactions

Every student of comedy should see Dame Edna at least twice.
-- Dick Cavett

#Dames #Comedy #Students

Can you picture yourself at the age 60 doing what you do now?
-- Dick Cavett

#Age

There should be three days a week when no one is allowed to say: 'What's your sign?' Violators would have their copies of Kahlil Gibran confiscated.
-- Dick Cavett

#Astrology #Three #Week

Just think of all the billions of coincidences that don't happen.
-- Dick Cavett

#Thinking #Statistics #Coincidence

Why are sex and violence always linked? I'm afraid they'll blur together in people's minds - sexandviolence - until we can't tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, "The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex."
-- Dick Cavett

#Sex #People #Police

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.
-- Dick Cavett

#Strong #Anxiety #Ego

Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.
-- Dick Cavett

#Running #Drama #Tragedy

I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.
-- Dick Cavett

#Psychics #Laughing #Quacks

Depression - it falls into that small category of things like combat that, if you haven't been in it, you can say you can imagine it all you like. But it's truly different.
-- Dick Cavett

#Fall #Different #Imagine

You can, after all, reduce the reasons for watching TV to but two: to be lulled, and to be stimulated. Some people do one sometimes, the other sometimes. Some people do all of one or all of the other.
-- Dick Cavett

#Two #People #Watching Tv

Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians . And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population . But oh, how they try.
-- Dick Cavett

#Mean #Successful #Comedian

I love my own coincidences and love to hear other peoples' stories.
-- Dick Cavett

#And Love #Stories #Coincidence

Japanese is sort of a hobby of mine, and I can get around Japan with ease.
-- Dick Cavett

#Japan #Hobbies #Ease

I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity.
-- Dick Cavett

#Thinking #Age #Mediocrity

Teaching is an art and a profession requiring years of training.
-- Dick Cavett

#Art #Teaching #Years

The brain process that results in a joke materializing where no joke was before remains a mystery. I'm not aware of any scholarly, scientific or neurological studies on the subject.
-- Dick Cavett

#Brain #Study #Mystery

Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn't ailing.
-- Dick Cavett

#Devices #Electronic Devices #Dislike

I have a disturbing problem with losing things. My vulnerability to loss-distress could properly be labeled not only inordinate, but neurotic.
-- Dick Cavett

#Loss #Losing #Problem

Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous.
-- Dick Cavett

#Trying #Bags #Sleazes

I have a long list of things that make me mad.
-- Dick Cavett

#Long #Mad #Lists

Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry.
-- Dick Cavett

#Home #Ideas #Dentistry

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people, they finally dropped it from judo.
-- Dick Cavett

#Book #Kids #People

To call New York's traffic at holiday time a nightmare is to understate.
-- Dick Cavett

#New York #Holiday #Nightmare

In relative youth, we assume we'll remember everything. Someone should urge the young to think otherwise.
-- Dick Cavett

#Thinking #Youth #Assuming

Therapists need to give a depressed patient support and direction.
-- Dick Cavett

#Giving #Support #Needs

I get a kick out of people saying I was funny.
-- Dick Cavett

#People #Kicks