Fred Allen famous quotes

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Sarcastic #Anger

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.
-- Fred Allen

#Business #Treats #Partners

I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back.
-- Fred Allen

#Graduation #Education #Laughter

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
-- Fred Allen

#Witty #Powerful #Humorous

Television is a triumph of equipment over people, and the minds that control it are so small that you could put them in a gnat's navel with room left over for two caraway seeds and an agent's heart.
-- Fred Allen

#Heart #Two #Gnats

What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement.
-- Fred Allen

#Inspirational #Sarcastic #Sarcasm

An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.
-- Fred Allen

#Business #Agency #Confusion

It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads to your hips.
-- Fred Allen

#Laughter #Down And #Hips

If the grass is greener in the other fellow's yard- let him worry about cutting it.
-- Fred Allen

#Uplifting #Cutting #Worry

Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything.
-- Fred Allen

#People #Watches #Television

Television is the triumph of machine over people.
-- Fred Allen

#People #Triumph #Machines

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
-- Fred Allen

#Sarcastic #Men #Should

I don't have to look up my family tree, because I know that I'm the sap.
-- Fred Allen

#Family #Tree #Looks

If criticism had any power to harm, the skunk would be extinct by now.
-- Fred Allen

#Criticism #Would Be #Harm

The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Clever #Two

A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.
-- Fred Allen

#Work #Groups #Unnecessary

California is a fine place to live - if you happen to be an orange.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Laughter #California

Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.
-- Fred Allen

#Technology #Done #Television

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Hard Work #Dark

A human being is nothing but a story with skin around it.
-- Fred Allen

#Skins #Stories #Humans

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Failure #Sunday

I'm a little hoarse tonight. I've been living in Chicago for the past two months, and you know how it is, yelling for help on the way home every night. Things are so tough in Chicago that at Easter time, for bunnies the little kids use porcupines.
-- Fred Allen

#Easter #Home #Kids

The world is a grindstone and life is your nose
-- Fred Allen

#Life Sucks #Noses #World

Some movie stars wear their sunglasses even in church. They're afraid God might recognize them and ask for autographs.
-- Fred Allen

#Stars #Pride #Church

Radio is called a medium because it is rare that anything is well done.
-- Fred Allen

#Done #Radio #Mediums

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.
-- Fred Allen

#Stars #Mistake #Iowa

It is probably not love that makes the world go around, but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners recognize their dependence on each other for the achievement of shared and private goals.
-- Fred Allen

#Love #Stay Strong #Goal

An income tax form is like a laundry list - either way you lose your shirt.
-- Fred Allen

#Income #Way #Lists

The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed.
-- Fred Allen

#Men #Space #World

If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race.
-- Fred Allen

#Race #Membership #Fees

Condensed milk is wonderful. I don't see how they can get a cow to sit down on those little cans.
-- Fred Allen

#Littles #Cows #Milk

I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered in me and I started shaking. And then I walked back into the house and my wife asked, 'What's the matter?' and I said 'I don't feel good.' And tears - uncontrollable tears - was coming out of my eyes. And she said, 'What's the matter?' And I said 'I just thought about that execution I did two days ago, and everybody else's that I was involved with.' And what it was something triggered within and it just - everybody - all of these executions all of a sudden sprung forward.
-- Fred Allen

#Eye #Two #Wife

All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.
-- Fred Allen

#Laughter #Echoes #Years

A psychiatrists is the next man you start talking to after you start talking to yourself.
-- Fred Allen

#Humor #Men #Talking

The S.S. Sierra was a ten-thousand-ton vessel. Today, lifeboats bigger than the Sierra are found on the Queen Mary and other luxury liners.
-- Fred Allen

#Queens #Luxury #Sailing

When Jack Benny plays the violin, it sounds as though the strings are still in the cat.
-- Fred Allen

#Music #Cat #Play

He dreamed he was eating shredded wheat and woke up to find the mattress half gone.
-- Fred Allen

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in my goose.
-- Fred Allen

#Work #Writing #Quills

English coffee tastes like water that has been squeezed out of a wet sleeve.
-- Fred Allen

#Coffee #Water #Taste

I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
-- Fred Allen

#Men #Doctors #Boston

Television is a triumph of equipment over people,
-- Fred Allen

#People #Triumph #Television

After quitting radio I was able to live on the money I saved on aspirins.
-- Fred Allen

#Money #Aspirin #Radio

A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 AM and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 PM to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.
-- Fred Allen

#Work #Men #Pms

Hollywood is a great place if you're an orange.
-- Fred Allen

#Art #Orange #Hollywood

My agent gets 10 percent of everything I get, except the blinding headaches.
-- Fred Allen

#Agents #Headache

On ships they call them barnacles; in business they attach themselves to desks and are called vice presidents.
-- Fred Allen

#President #Ships #Vices

Three million frogs' legs are served in Paris - daily. Nobody knows what became of the rest of the frogs.
-- Fred Allen

#Paris #Legs #Frogs

Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
-- Fred Allen

#Long #Comedy #Talent

Vaudeville could not vouch for the honesty, the integrity, or the mentality of the individuals who collectively made up the horde the medium embraced. All the human race demands of its members is that they be born. That is all vaudeville demanded. You just had to be born. You could be ignorant and be a star. You could be a moron and be wealthy. The elements that went to make up vaudeville were combed from the jungles, the four corners of the world, the intelligentsia and the subnormal.
-- Fred Allen

#Stars #Honesty #Integrity

Father Time is the make-up man responsible for the physical changes that determine the parts the average actor is to play.
-- Fred Allen

#Father #Men #Average

A comedian who starts talking to himself becomes his own audience. This is fatal.
-- Fred Allen

#Talking #Comedian #Audience

In show business, more showgirls are kept than promises.
-- Fred Allen

#Promise #Shows #Show Business

I'd rather have two girls at seventeen than one at thirty-four.
-- Fred Allen

#Girl #Women #Two

If children could vote, Jesse Jackson would be our next president.
-- Fred Allen

#Children #President #Would Be

Hush, little bright line, don’t you cry You’ll be a cliché by and by.
-- Fred Allen

#Lines #Littles #Cry

Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all.
-- Fred Allen

#Eye #Brain #Mind

With the advance of refrigeration, I hope that along with the frozen foods someday we will have frozen conversation. A person will be able to keep a frozen promise indefinitely.
-- Fred Allen

#Promise #Frozen #Able

Everywhere outside New York City is Bridgeport, Connecticut.
-- Fred Allen

#New York #Humor #Cities

My uncle is a Southern planter. He's an undertaker in Alabama.
-- Fred Allen

#Uncles #Southern #Alabama

Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.
-- Fred Allen

#Years #Justice #Style

During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.
-- Fred Allen

#Men #Today #Bigs

An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Art #Guy

A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better.
-- Fred Allen

#Stars #Agents #Telescopes

Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.
-- Fred Allen

#Cities #Competition #Actors

I play a musical instrument a little, but only for my own amazement.
-- Fred Allen

#Play #Musical #Littles

A gentleman is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Men #Gentleman

Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.
-- Fred Allen

#Men #Mind #Bags

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.
-- Fred Allen

#Movie #Heart #Hollywood

An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.
-- Fred Allen

#Life #Success #Congratulations

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Witty #Humorous

I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can't remember what the third thing is.
-- Fred Allen

#Inspirational #Memories #Names

A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen

#Inspirational #Funny #Teamwork

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny #Writing #Years

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.
-- Fred Allen

#Humorous #Cities #Paris

I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin.
-- Fred Allen

#Funny Life #Coffins #Want

All I know about humor is that I don't know anything about it.
-- Fred Allen

#Sense Of Humor

The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows the average man can see much better than he can think- Ladies' Home JournalI'd rather have two girls at seventeen than one at thirty-four
-- Fred Allen

#Girl #Home #Maturity

Cocktail party: A gathering held to enable forty people to talk about themselves at the same time. The man who remains after the liquor is gone is the host.
-- Fred Allen

#Party #Men #People

He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both eyes.
-- Fred Allen

#Sarcastic #Eye #Blind

He's so small, he's a waste of skin.
-- Fred Allen

#Sarcastic #Skins #Waste

Success is like dealing with your kid or teaching your wife to drive. Sooner or later you'll end up in the police station.
-- Fred Allen

#Teaching #Kids #Successful

My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense.
-- Fred Allen

#Children #Father #Self

The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.
-- Fred Allen

#Travel #Paris #Phrases

He always had a chip on his shoulder that he was ready to use to kindle an argument.
-- Fred Allen

#Anger #Use #Argument

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.
-- Fred Allen

#Competition #Historical #Comedian

Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.
-- Fred Allen

#Life #Men #Objectivity

The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference.
-- Fred Allen

#Agency #President #Vices

The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen

#Love #Pride #Hands