Lily Tomlin Quotes

If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.

For fast-acting relief try slowing down.

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?

Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed.

I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.

Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.

Maybe if people started to listen, history would stop repeating itself.

Wouldn't it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas.

The best mind-altering drug is the truth.

If I had known what it would be like to have it all - I might have been willing to settle for less.

What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down where you can find it.

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

You are what you think ... geez, that's frightening.

The start to a better world is the belief that it is possible.

When I am happy I feel like crying, but when I am sad I don’t feel like laughing. I think it is better to be happy; then you get two feelings for the price of one.

Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.

Success is a ladder that cannot be climbed with your hands in your pocket - The road to success is always under construction

After all, in private, we're all misfits

I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle, it's much too confining.

Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.

The formula for water is H2O. Is the formula for an ice cube H2O squared?

Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination.

We are all in this together, by ourselves.

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.

I feel some part of me can wake up and be very existential and the next day wake up and be sort of in love with the universe.

The phone company handles 84 billion calls a year-everything from kings, queens, and presidents to the scum of the earth.

We are people with lives, not consumers with lifestyles.

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

Well, if I can be of any help at all, you are in worse trouble than I thought.

If trying harder doesn't work, try softer.

Being a New Yorker is never having to say you are sorry.

Remember we're all in this alone.

When we speak to God, we call it prayer; when God speaks back, we call it psychosis!

You know being relevant or coming up with something interesting, funny to say about what's current is just as hard as it might ever be depending on the serendipity of it all.

What if it's boring - or if it's not boring, it might be too revealing, or worse, it might be too revealing and still be boring.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.

Creating characters is just another way to express a type and put that type to use.

If you have a dog or a cat, you know how developed they can be. How sensitive, how aware. They suffer. We all do.

Even when I'm being funny, I'm deadly serious.

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.

There's nothing sadder than getting to the end of your life and saying, 'I didn't do it right'.

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

When we talk to god, it's prayer. When god talks to us, it's schizophrenia.

If beauty is truth, why don't women go to the library to have their hair done?