Johnny Carson Quotes

Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.

In Hollywood if you don't have a shrink, people think you're crazy.

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself.

You lose what individualism you have, if you have enough of course, you retain some of it, but most don't have enough, so they become watchers of game shows, y’know, things like that. Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you’re doing something, and you get married, like marriage is a victory and you have children like having children is a victory, but most things people do are a total grind, marriage, birth, children, it’s something they HAVE to do because they have nothing else to do. There is no glory in it, no esteem, no fire, their lives are flat and the earth is full of them. Sorry, but thats the way I see it. I could not accept the snail’s pace 8-5, Johnnie Carson, merry christmas, happy new year, to me it’s the sickest of all sick things.

The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.

If life was fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators dead.

people pay more to be entertained that educated

Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.

If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

Your chances of getting hit by lighting go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say "Storms suck!!

Asked how he became a star, Mr. Carson once replied, “I started in a gaseous state and then I cooled.

For 3 days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but the phone calls taper off.

Dylan's friend Linus Millberg appears out of the crowd with a cup of beer and shouts, 'Dorothy is John Lennon, the Scarecrow is Paul McCartney, the Tin Woodman is George Harrison, the Lion's Ringo.' 'Star Trek,' commands Dylan over the lousy twangy country CB's is playing between sets. 'Easy,' Linus shouts back. "Kirk's John, Spock's Paul, Bones is George, Scotty is Ringo. Or Chekov, after the first season. Doesn't matter, it's like a Scotty-Chekov-combination Ringo. Spare parts are always surplus Georges or Ringos.' 'But isn't Spock-lacks-a-heart and McCoy-lacks-a-brain like Woodman and Scarecrow? So Dorothy's Kirk?' 'You don't get it. That's just a superficial coincidence. The Beatle thing is an archetype, it's like the basic human formation. Everything naturally forms into a Beatles, people can't help it.' 'Say the types again.' 'Responsible-parent genius-parent genius-child clown-child.' 'Okay, do Star Wars.' 'Luke Paul, Han Solo John, Chewbacca George, the robots Ringo.' 'Tonight Show.' 'Uh, Johnny Carson Paul, the guest John, Ed McMahon Ringo, whatisname George.' 'Doc Severinson.' 'Yeah, right. See, everything revolves around John, even Paul. That's why John's the guest.' 'And Severinson's quiet but talented, like a Wookie.' 'You begin to understand.

Just be yourself -- it's the only way it can work.

Desire! That’s the one secret of every man’s career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire.

If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.

Your chances of getting hit by lightning go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say "storms suck!

If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.

Your chances of getting hit by lightning go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say “Storms suck!” —Johnny carson

Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are Johnny Carson and find yourself caught in an intolerable one-on-one conversation at a cocktail party from which there is no escape. Which of the two following events would you prefer to take place: (1) That the other person become more and more witty and charming, the music more beautiful, the scene transformed to a villa at Capri on the loveliest night of the year, while you find yourself more and more at a loss; or (2) that you are still in Beverly Hills and the chandeliers begin to rattle, a 7.5 Richter earthquake takes place, and presently you find yourself and the other person alive and well, and talking under a mound of rubble. If your choice is (2), explain why it is possible for a true conversation to take place under the conditions of (2) but not (1).

In the end, it’s true, we each must die alone, but the love and friendship we share with one another show that we do not live alone.

Gus doesn’t belong in this world. He was born with a Hollywood chin, a butter touch, and an ear that can hear rhythms tapped out from Neptune. In another life he would have been drumming in Johnny Carson’s band, drinking water out of a mug. But in this one he has a disease and he can’t say no to shysters like Charlie, who uses his wife and kid to cheat on Gus’s lousy, glowing heart.

Now the evening's at its noon, its meridian. The outgoing tide has simmered down, and there's a lull-like the calm in the eye of a hurricane - before the reverse tide starts to set in. The last acts of the three-act plays are now on, and the after-theater eating places are beginning to fill up with early comers; Danny's and Lindy's - yes, and Horn & Hardart too. Everybody has got where they wanted to go - and that was out somewhere. Now everybody will want to get back where they came from - and that's home somewhere. Or as the coffee-grinder radio, always on the beam, put it at about this point: 'New York, New York, it's a helluva town, The Bronx is up, the Battery's down, And the people ride around in a hole in the ground. Now the incoming tide rolls in; the hours abruptly switch back to single digits again, and it's a little like the time you put your watch back on entering a different time zone. Now the buses knock off and the subway expresses turn into locals and the locals space themselves far apart; and as Johnny Carson's face hits millions of screens all at one and the same time, the incoming tide reaches its crest and pounds against the shore. There's a sudden splurge, a slew of taxis arriving at the hotel entrance one by one as regularly as though they were on a conveyor belt, emptying out and then going away again. Then this too dies down, and a deep still sets in. It's an around-the-clock town, but this is the stretch; from now until the garbage-grinding trucks come along and tear the dawn to shreds, it gets as quiet as it's ever going to get. This is the deep of the night, the dregs, the sediment at the bottom of the coffee cup. The blue hours; when guys' nerves get tauter and women's fears get greater. Now guys and girls make love, or kill each other or sometimes both. And as the windows on the 'Late Show' title silhouette light up one by one, the real ones all around go dark. And from now on the silence is broken only by the occasional forlorn hoot of a bogged-down drunk or the gutted-cat squeal of a too sharply swerved axle coming around a turn. Or as Billy Daniels sang it in Golden Boy: While the city sleeps, And the streets are clear, There's a life that's happening here. ("New York Blues")

You can't really be too concerned with what people think of you. You're on your own adventure of growth and discovery. Like Charles Bukowski said, 'People think I'm down on Fifth and Main at the Blarney Stone, but really I'm on top floor of the health club with a towel in my lap, watching Johnny Carson.' So it's not always good to be where people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well ... which is easily done, because then you don't have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else.

It was as though his son cheated him by depriving him of his beloved presence, the sweet and treacherous thief had plundered his heart. If Johnny had died in any other way, cancer or leukaemia… he could have grieved with a clear heart, cried also. But suicide seemed a deliberate act of spite which the Judge resented.

including thousands of paintings in his unique, semi-cartoonish style, often densely packed with animals and figures—Elvis, George Washington, angels—and set fancifully in apocalyptic landscapes. In short order, he was appearing on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and creating album covers for R.E.M. and Talking Heads. Upon entry to the garden, I was greeted by a giant self-portrait of a smirking Finster in a burgundy suit, affixed to a cinderblock wall. At the bottom are the words “I began painting pictures in Jan-1976—without any training. This is my painting. A person don’t know what he can do unless he tryes. Trying things is the answer to find your talent.

There’s been a lot of research recently on how hard it is to dislodge an impression once it’s been implanted in someone’s mind. (This is why political attack ads don’t have to be true to be effective. The other side can point out their inaccuracies, but the voter’s mind privileges the memory of the original accusation, which was juicier than any counterargument ever could be.)

Charles de Gaulle said? ‘The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

NBC. How could I not? I grew up watching Seinfeld, Johnny Carson, Late Night with David Letterman, and reruns of The Mothers-in-Law.

I was invited,” said Johnny in his monologue, with transparently faux joviality, “in the same sense that Spiro Agnew was invited to return the money.

As Susan Forward says in her insightful book, Toxic Parents, “All of us develop our expectations about how people will treat us based on our relationships with our parents.

company

If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.  Johnny Carson

relationship, when I read a magazine article in which he said that I was his best friend. Friend? No, I don’t think we were friends. The collar around my neck was usually quite loose and comfortable, but not always. There was never a question about who

All of us develop our expectations about how people will treat us based on our relationships with our parents. If those relationships are, for the most part, emotionally nourishing, respectful of our rights and feelings, we’ll grow up expecting others to treat us in much the same way. . . . But if childhood is a time of unrelenting anxiety, tension, and pain, then we develop negative expectations and rigid defenses.

Hope kicked things off by asking if we had heard the story about Jesus playing golf with Saint Peter. “They’re teeing off on the 180-yard par-three sixth hole. Saint Peter hits a perfect five iron ten feet from the cup. Jesus then shanks his five iron out of bounds and it’s heading over a fence. Suddenly an eagle flies overhead, and before the ball can land in the bushes, the eagle plucks it in midair and circles the green. A moment later, the bird drops the ball directly on the green. And it rolls right into the cup for a hole in one. Saint Peter looks at Jesus and says, ‘All right—are you going to play golf or are you just going to fuck around?

May a love-starved fruit fly molest your sister’s nectarines.

As Susan Forward says in her insightful book, Toxic Parents, “All of us develop our expectations about how people will treat us based on our relationships with our parents. If those relationships are, for the most part, emotionally nourishing, respectful of our rights and feelings, we’ll grow up expecting others to treat us in much the same way. . . . But if childhood is a time of unrelenting anxiety, tension, and pain, then we develop negative expectations and rigid defenses.

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most of it unsolved.

Hollywood was called Tinseltown for a reason and I was caught up in its glitter. My friend Ken seemed to know everyone and once took me to the NBC Studios in Burbank, where he introduced me to Steve Allen. “Steverino,” as he was known by friends, must have thought that I wanted to get into show business and promised that if I applied myself, I would go places. I hadn’t really given show business much thought, but it sounded good to me. However, I’m glad that I didn’t count on his promise of becoming a star, because that was the end of it. I never saw Steve Allen again, other than on television, and I guess that’s just the way it was in Hollywood. Later Steve Allen starred in NBC’s The Tonight Show, which in more recent times has been hosted by Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and now by Jimmy Fallon. Steve Allen had a rider in his contract that whenever he was introduced as a guest, the introduction would include: “And now our next guest is world-renowned recording artist, actor, producer, playwright, best-selling author, composer of thousands of songs, Emmy winning comic genius and entertainer – Steve Allen.” He was a funny guy and he would crack me up, but more than that, he would frequently crack himself up. Steve was loved or hated by people. It was said that he was enormously talented, and if you didn’t believe that, just ask him. Jack Paar, who followed Steve on The Tonight Show, once said, “Steve Allen has claimed to have written over 1,000 songs; name one???” The truth is that he did write a huge number of songs, including the 1963 Grammy award-winning composition, The Gravy Waltz. He wrote about 50 books, one of which is Steve Allen’s Private Joke File, published in 2000, just prior to his death in that same year. He also has two stars on the “Hollywood Walk of Fame,” one for radio and one for TV. Say what you want…. He cracked up at least two people with his humor, himself and me!

Henry, did you know that it’s a proven fact that married men live longer than single guys? It’s also a proven fact that married men are far more willing to die.

The first scientific model of this system appeared in Dr. Rupert Sheldrake's A New Science of Life. Where Leary and Grof, like Jung and Freud, assumed the non-ego information, not known to the brain, must come from the genes, Sheldrake, a biologist, knew that genes cannot carry such information. He therefore posited a non-local field, like those in quantum theory, which he named the morphogenetic field. This field communicates between genes but cannot be found "in" the genes — just as Johnny Carson "travels" between TV sets but cannot be found "in" any of the TV sets that receive him.

ASSUMPTION IS THE MOTHER OF ALL FUCKUPS.

A third reason for auditory atrophy is the expectation of congregations, who have come to believe that the sermon is monologue, not motivation, that it is designed for entertainment. The service becomes less an opportunity for reconciliation, restoration, and renewal and more a Sunday morning version of what Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, and now Jimmy Fallon provide on weekday nights: a monologue to make us laugh, music to amuse or bemuse us (having paid singers in the choir doesn’t hurt, nor does an organ that cost more than most

Fred Silverman gave Dave a contract to sit around and wait [to fill in] for Johnny Carson — beautiful.

Propelled by the oil shock, fears of scarcity wafted across the nation like a bad smell. Rumors of shortages in any number of goods—gasoline, salmon, cheese, onions, raisins—caused brief, unwarranted episodes of anxiety, some of them about commodities one would never imagine could run out. The Great Toilet Paper Panic of 1973 occurred after talk-show host Johnny Carson joked about a shortage, causing frightened consumers to buy out stores.

And the night that Chris Rock said, “Any time you find yourself on Martin Luther King Boulevard, get off.

Hemingway said that the best thing a writer can have is “a built-in shit detector.

Okay, Cliff, but let me just say this: right now Johnny needs to feel as if he were the only star you have.” “Okay,” said Cliff. “I get it.” I then talked Johnny into seeing Cliff. “That’s the least you owe him.” And up we went. Once Carson entered the suite, the Perlman charm took over. He took Carson by the arm and showed him the apartment. Sitting atop the hotel, it was 10,000 square feet of opulence, with a rooftop swimming pool, Jacuzzi, wine cellar, health spa, six bedrooms, and a living room that was easily able to accommodate 300 people. “Every time you come to Caesars,” said Perlman, “this is where you’ll stay.” “Nice,” said Johnny, now notably calmer. “But I don’t see a tennis court up here.” “No, it’s downstairs. But you know that our head pro is Pancho Gonzales,” said Cliff, invoking the name of one of the greatest players of the pre-Open era. “Any time you want to hit with him, it’s on me.” “Thank you, Cliff.” “You know,” said Perlman, closing the deal, “I’ve never let anyone stay up here, not even Sinatra. But I owe this to you as a show of my appreciation for your working here.

Several pills and a hot shower later, I felt well enough to go back to the party. To my surprise, the three girls were skinny-dipping in the rooftop swimming pool, while Johnny, wearing nothing but an apron, served them wine from a silver platter. “Ze white is a 1968 Chassagne-Montrachet,” he said in a cheesy accent plucked from the Mighty Carson Art Players, “and ze rhedd is a 1966 Pétrus.” I was impressed; that Pétrus went for $3,000 a bottle. “Come on, Henry,” Johnny shouted. “Take off your clothes! Join the fun!” Well, I

The easiest way to catch the knuckleball,” Uecker later told Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, “is to wait for it to stop rolling and then pick it up.

Johnny Carson once said that you should never use a big word when a dirty little one would do. I adore language: the sexy sway of lyricism, the clever shuffle of satire. I love ballistic verse and juicy metaphor, and fucking hell do I love expletives. Everyone knows that dropping the F-bomb brings a point home like no other.

Iranians were never on TV before. Now they’re on all the time. Images of angry Iranian students shouting “Death to America” dominate the nightly news. There’s even a whole, new news show on ABC opposite The Late Show with Johnny Carson: The Iran Crisis—America Held Hostage: Day Fill in the Blank. Every day, the show’s title updates, e.g., America Held Hostage: Day Six, America Held Hostage: Day Seven. The worst advent calendar ever.

Sound occurs in the ears. Sound does not occur in the atmosphere. It occurs essentially within the human being, and that’s Descartes’s great contribution to psychology and philosophy. Which is where that thing comes from where they say if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there, does it make a noise? And that—that joke question which comes up on the Johnny Carson show every once in a while didn’t exist before Descartes, which is, you know, the seventeenth century. Descartes was the person who formulated that; he said sound occurs in the human sensory apparatus. It doesn’t occur in the atmosphere. It occurs within the body.

Truly Be the Voice of Science If you want to make a major contribution to science communication, you need to know from the outset that it will be a long and personal journey. It won't be easy. It won't be safe. And it's doubtful you'll be able to control the timeline. No one told Carl Sagan to write science fiction novels, get involved with Hollywood filmmaking, or go on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. He simply had an inner voice driving him to reach out and share his passion for science. He was the voice of science, by his own doing.

Soon an accommodation was reached. NBC News covered the event,

I actually visited the Palomar Observatory to look through that famous telescope. And as I looked back into billions of years of history from that device, I could not find a single reason why this goddamn club is giving a dinner for a son of a bitch like Buddy Hackett.” It

a $55,000 check from the Johnny Carson Foundation had recently landed in their PO box, accompanied by a note from the King of Late Night himself: “It is important to help the area kids to have the same advantages and education that larger cities’ kids already have and also help the rural area.

Johnny liked Reagan personally, and while he was scrupulous to never share a political view with his viewers—“Why lose fifty percent of my audience?”—he was by instinct and upbringing definitely Republican, but of an Eisenhower sort that we don’t see much anymore: strong on integration and civil rights, skeptical of the military and war, big on personal responsibility. Overall, you’d have to say he was anti-big: anti–big government, anti–big money, anti–big bullies, anti–big blowhards.

Now the incoming tide rolls in; the hours abruptly switch back to single digits again, and it’s a little like the time you put your watch back on entering a different time zone. Now the buses knock off and the subway expresses turn into locals and the locals space themselves far apart; and as Johnny Carson’s face hits millions of screens all at one and the same time, the incoming tide reaches its crest and pounds against the shore. There’s a sudden splurge, a slew of taxis arriving at the hotel entrance one by one as regularly as though they were on a conveyor belt, emptying out and then going away again.