Top 70 Jerry Lewis Quotes

I almost get annoyed at the fact that I’m not going to use all that I got.

I go where the action is.

There’s something wonderful about taking a tag off a pair of socks, off a shirt, off a jacket. I really think that it has to do with my wanting to give myself all the perks that there are. It’s part of my psychosis.

You would not believe some of the scripts I have seen. I have read something like 160 that I’ve rejected, and I keep them all, for posterity.

When I was young, I wasn’t disciplined at all.

When I arrived in Las Vegas, I felt I was embraced by it.

I’ve had the greatest respect for my work in this country by Americans. Critics have no brains.

I feel I have been a part of some very wonderful films, and I have had it in mind when I was on the set, every day, that what I am doing has meaning.

I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.

Seeing a woman project the kind of aggression that you have to project as a comic just rubs me wrong.

I’ve raised my boys the old-fashioned way, with spankings, sending them upstairs if they misbehave at parties, the works. I believe discipline is the proof of love.

This is the pain pacemaker. I’ve got a battery under my skin. From that battery are two electrodes that go into the spine where they cut bone away to accommodate it. Now I put on the power here. If I have the pain, the stimulator starts. It’s tingling, like when your foot falls asleep, you know?

My God, the stage is the only place I know where to go.

My dad was a stickler for teaching me the pratfall. There is something magical about taking a good fall, and when it works, when you get that laugh, there’s no better feeling in the world.

I think so much in time. I always have. Even at 20, I thought in terms of time, that I don’t have a lot of time left. And I want to do so many things.

You think about getting old, but when you get there, it’s not what you thought it would be.

It’ll keep you alive for another 10 years if you get yourself a laugh once a day: either provoke it, or look around in the wildest laboratory in the world, the public.

From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I’ve taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you’re gonna have problems.

I started as a writer. I had the dumb act, but I made my living from writing.

I don’t ordinarily do television because I don’t like some of the things projected on it.

I really am opinionated, but not for long. I have found myself coming off of what I think of something because the guy I’m talking to makes better sense than I am. I have so many points of view, I can’t keep track of ’em, because I talk to too many people… I’m not so opinionated that I won’t budge.

When you get a question like, ‘Did you like meeting Her Majesty?’ ‘No, I thought she was a slob.’ I mean, what are you going to say… The mischief comes into me when I’m doing a Q&A, I’m 9 years old again. I don’t get mad. I do get offended.

I was once six feet tall, but at 85, I’m now five feet four.

You see, the people that have a point of view and have an opinion and have some intellect are dangerous in the film community – they’re dangerous.

An only child, I always wanted a large hug-house.

When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.

When you are debilitated, and you’re very depressed, and you believe there’s no hope, you cannot get a better potpourri of down.

I say to everybody, love is what wakes you up in the morning, love is what makes you walk, and love is what makes you hope.

I like to watch all those shows that shouldn’t be on the air – reality shows.

I would not want to do one-episode television – that’s just a brief encounter with your audience. The arc takes the actor into an arena where he can really stretch.

When I’m working, I stay in ICU in any hospital that will get me a bed.

I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don’t have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.

My family was as absolute as the work.Family was first always.

Love is what makes you dream, and love is what makes you want to get up in the morning. Love is something that you want to be a part of because it makes you better.

God hadn’t made me handsome, but he’d given me something, I always felt: funny bones.

When you’re doing a different kind of film, you have to bring a different kind of attitude; you have to bring a different kind of concentration.

I can’t stand to ask anyone, ‘How was that?’

Commercial television has underestimated the intelligence of the public.

Getting attention is my business. My whole life’s predicated on, ‘Hey, look at me!’

Every man’s dream is to be able to sink into the arms of a woman without also falling into her hands.

Every day is another something that comes along.

We’re leaving the House to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth… or couldn’t get better jobs in the first place.

The people at Columbia Pictures have been great, but I had to tell them, ‘Please don’t be nice to me. Just pay me.’

I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have and I never will. I’m an entertainer for 75 years.

I don’t want to be remembered. I want the nice words when I can hear them.

I believe when you go out there, you have a responsibility to deliver. I have old-fashioned thinking when I’m out there.

I’m really, basically, nine, and I’ve always been that. I’ve never, ever allowed the child within me to die.

Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue – nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us.

You want to know why Barbra Streisand is so difficult? Because she’s brilliant. She’s a brilliant entertainer, she’s a brilliant lady, and she’s a wonderful human being, and the community doesn’t like it.

A wonderful thing happens over time. You fall in love with the sound of your own voice.

A woman doing comedy doesn’t offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.

The young man who’s had the Guggenheim fortune behind him all his life – he can hire all the authorities on the subject to teach him how to do a monologue, but he’s never going to have the right stuff to pull it off. If he doesn’t walk out onstage needing to walk out there, he doesn’t have a dream of doing well.

I’ve never been more than 9 years old.

If you’re an old pro, you know how well you’re doing when you’re doing it, and your inner government spanks you if you’re not doing well.

I don’t like any female comedians.

I got the ‘Max Rose’ script, and I fell in love with it. It just hit me. It was something that needed to be made.

When I would be myself, I was being big-headed. I was being egotistical. I was a megalomaniac, when it really was just having not to be a monkey for a few hours a day. And fulfilling the need to be a man.

When you’re 89, dementia develops. I mean, I’ve told a story onstage, and I’m telling it with a full heart, and I forgot the damn punch line.

I don’t talk about anything negative.

Going unnoticed has never been my strong suit.

You can’t hold comedy back, because it needs to be exposed.

I make sure that I take good care of me.

I’m sour at times.

Turning 90 is not for sissies.

I almost resent being Charley Moviestar. Yeah, I’m grateful. But it takes me away from my kids.

I happen to believe in the human condition so strongly that I don’t have to make up games to play with people. Here’s what I think: If it’s good, let’s go for it. If it needs work to be better, let’s work on it.

I’m always thinking about future projects and at the same time trying to finish the project you’re in the middle off.

I have some very personal feelings about politics, but I don’t get into it because I do comedy already.

The greatest thing I can remember in my whole career was the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey clowns asking me to appear with them at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1965.

I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have, and I never will.