Quote

When a comic becomes enamored with his own views and foists them off on the public in a polemic way, he loses not only his sense of humor but his value as a humorist.

Johnny Carson

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Johnny Carson
Age: 79 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 23
Died: 2005
Died: January 23
Actor
Host
Journalist
Magician
Military Officer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Presenter
Writer
Corning
Iowa
John William Carson
Carson
The Great Carsoni
Values
Humorists
Sense
Comic
Way
Value
Humor
Becomes
Polemic
Views
Polemics
Loses
Humorist
Public
Enamored

More quotes by Johnny Carson

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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.'
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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.
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Happiness is sitting down to watch some slides of your neighbor's vacation and finding out that he spent two weeks in a nudist colony.
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A two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry-that's Thanksgiving dinner at Three Mile Island.
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Egyptian President Sadat had a belly dancer entertain President Nixon at a state dinner. Mr. Nixon was really impressed. He hadn't seen contortions like that since Rose Mary Woods.
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In 1932, lame duck president Herbert Hoover was so desperate to remain in the White House that he dressed up as Eleanor Roosevelt. When FDR discovered the hoax in 1936, the two men decided to stay together for the sake of the children.
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For days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.
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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.
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There are very few Japanese Jews. As a result, there is no Japanese word for Alan King.
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I hear that whenever someone in the White House tells a lie, Nixon gets a royalty.
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Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.
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If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.
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I would like to say, for the record, that I am in favor of using more American Indians and other minorities in motion pictures, I am against polluting the oceans of the world, I am for every nationality having its own homeland, I am against whacking baby seals on the head, and I am for saving the whales.
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There's a big difference between being a loner and being lonely. I'm far from lonely. My day is full of things I enjoy, starting with my show. Any time my work is going well and I have a relationship with a woman that's pretty solid, that does it for me.
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Money gives me just one big thing that's really important, and that's the freedom of not having to worry about money.
Johnny Carson
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It's the lack of this kind of open and honest education about sex that causes so many kids to grow up with sexual hang-ups.
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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.
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An oxymoron? What's that? A moron who studies at Oxford?
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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.
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Only lie about the future.
Johnny Carson