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Democracy means free television, not good television, but free.

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
Television
Democracy
Free
Means
Mean
Good

More quotes by Johnny Carson

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When the public starts classifying you as thoughtful, someone given to serious issues, you find yourself declassified as a humorist.
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The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.
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If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.
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If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.
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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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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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Some sad news from Australia... the inventor of the boomerang grenade died today.
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I hear that whenever someone in the White House tells a lie, Nixon gets a royalty.
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I get sick of that old rationalization, We're staying together because of the children. Kids couldn't be more miserable living with parents who can't stand each other. They're far better off if there's an honest, clean divorce.
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Believe me, you don't walk away from the kind of money you make with a daily television show. You might get awful tired of it sometimes, but take a second look at the check and you get less tired right away.
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Happiness is seeing your son drafted the same day he's been accepted to an expensive college.
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Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.
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I think it's almost immoral to keep on with a marriage that's really bad. It just gets more and more rotten and vindictive and everybody gets more and more hurt. There's not enough honesty about marriage, I think. I wish more people would face the truth about their marital situations.
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Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead.
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Maybe we should hold the next [Olympic] games in Afghanistan and hope the Soviets pull out of that one too.
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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.
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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.
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If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace.
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Despite the fact that computer speeds are measured in nanoseconds and picoseconds - one billionth and one trillionth of a second, respectively - the smallest interval of time known to man is that which occurs in Manhattan between the traffic signal turning green and the taxi driver behind you blowing his horn.
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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