If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more.
Spontaneity is such an entertaining facet of show business.
The Gong Show was the greatest scam of all time. It was simple: We wanted to do a talent show. There weren't any venues for acts back then. We were gonna have a show of new, fresh, good acts. But we couldn't find any; they were all lousy. So rather than throw away the idea, I said, "Let's reverse it. Let's do lousy acts. " Now, is that a scam? I'm telling you.
Fifty percent of something is better than than one hundred percent of nothing.
The Gong Show provided me with five years of the happiest times of my life, but that's that. And to be known as the guy who gave the world The Gong Show - listen, my Uncle George isn't known as anything. So I guess it isn't so bad in that context.
Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.
I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It's called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn't blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator
The gods do make playthings of us. . . but it is we mortals who provide them with the tools.
The church. . . is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.
I want you. Bad. Right now. Against the wall. On my bed. The floor and maybe in the bathroom later. I have a shower stall and a Jacuzzi we could put to really good use. I know you'd like it.
The drinking of wine seems to me to have a moral edge over many pleasures and hobbies in that it promotes love of one's neighbor.