Top 22 Steve Allen Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Steve Allen Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.
Steve Allen
If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.
Steve Allen
Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.
Steve Allen
Pretend you’re a southern sheriff. Or Mae West. Or Donald Duck. Buy a western hat and walk around the house like a cowboy. The point of all this, of course, is to draw yourself out of your accustomed groove.
Steve Allen
It often seems that, for whatever strange reasons, comedians, in addition to their formal performances, have more comic experiences in real life than other people do.
Steve Allen
To the extent that there is anything properly identifiable as dignity in our society today, our present writers of comedy would be inclined to treat it as a proper object of ridicule.
Steve Allen
What people will – or will not – laugh at is mainly determined by their social conditioning.
Steve Allen
If there is a God, the phrase that must disgust him is – holy war.
Steve Allen
Do I ever get questions that are rude or impertinent? Yes, but I love to use them. The audience immediately perceives the emotional awkwardness of the situation.
Steve Allen
Given a little time for the pain to subside, dreadful experiences often can be the basis of funny jokes or stories.
Steve Allen
In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.
Steve Allen
Asthma doesn’t seem to bother me any more unless I’m around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar.
Steve Allen
There used to be an art form called the ‘comedy of manners.’ Why aren’t comedies of manners made now in this country? The answer is simple. We no longer have manners to speak of.
Steve Allen
One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.
Steve Allen
The hair is real – it’s the head that’s a fake.
Steve Allen
We will take almost any kind of criticism except the observation that we have no sense of humor.
Steve Allen
I was in sixth grade the first time I was required to speak in front of an audience. I had terrible stage fright and felt quite ill, in fact, by the time I had to give my little talk to students in another class across the hall.
Steve Allen
Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.
Steve Allen
Many comedians and comedy writers have shared the childhood experience of learning to joke to protect themselves from neighborhood bullies when challenge or physical defense were not among the sensible options.
Steve Allen
Much of the best humor is found in the frequently tragic reality of human experience.
Steve Allen
Dark energy is perhaps the biggest mystery in physics.
Steve Allen
In those of us who have the mysterious ability to amuse others, it is usually the case that even before we were aware of our own abilities, we had become practiced at laughing more than other children in our social circle.
Steve Allen