Fred Allen Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

There are two kinds of jokes - funny jokes and Jack Benny jokes.

Television is the triumph of machine over people.

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

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

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

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

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

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

Television is a triumph of equipment over people.

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.

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

Everywhere outside New York City is Bridgeport, Connecticut.

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.

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

In show business, more showgirls are kept than promises.

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

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

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

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

It was once rumored that fledgling executives walked around their offices backwards so they wouldn't have to face an issue.

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

She used to be a teacher but she has no class now.

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.

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

He has no idea what it was like to grow up in the South, where you had to hold your head down.

To a newspaperman, a human being is an item with skin wrapped around it.

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

The average vice-president is a form of executive fungus that attaches itself to a desk. On a boat this growth would be called a barnacle.

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

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

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

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.

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

All I know about humour is that I don't know anything about it.

California is a fine place to live, if you happen to be an orange.

a group of people who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done

Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.

I have just returned from Boston it is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there.

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

(A gentleman) is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.

She used to be a schoolteacher but she has no class now.

My agent gets 10 percent of everything I get except the blinding headaches.

The first Sunday I sang in the church choir two hundred people changed their religion.

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.

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