George Burns Quotations

You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.

First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.

I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.

I spent a year in that town, one Sunday.

If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn't ask me, I'd still have to say it.

Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.

When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.

I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.

Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, a good cigar and a good woman - or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle.

The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.

I'm at the age now where just putting my cigar in its holder is a thrill.

I don't believe in dying. It's been done. I'm working on a new exit. Besides, I can't die now - I'm booked.

You've got to be honest; if you can fake that, you've got it made.

I smoke ten to fifteen cigars a day. At my age I have to hold on to something.

Nice to be here? At my age it's nice to be anywhere.

Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.

You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there.

It's hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.

Be quick to learn and wise to know.

This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.

Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.

Everything that goes up must come down. But there comes a time when not everything that's down can come up.

I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.

I would go out with women my age, but there are no women my age.

I can't afford to die; I'd lose too much money.

It's good to be here. At 98, it's good to be anywhere.

I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm very pleased to be anywhere.

If it's a good script I'll do it. And if it's a bad script, and they pay me enough, I'll do it.

Look to the future, because that is where you'll spend the rest of your life.

People are always asking me when Im going to retire. Why should I? Ive got it two ways - Im still making movies, and Im a senior citizen, so I can see myself at half price.

Our record doesn't show it, but we are getting better.

I think I look about 40 to 45, so I like it.

We were what you call a disappointment act, ... If an act got sick, we'd take their place.

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair

They notice, but they don't know what it is.

If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few people die past the age of a hundred.

Bridge is a game that separates the men from the boys. It also separates husbands and wives.

Dress simply. If you wear a dinner jacket, don't wear anything else on it ... like lunch or dinner.

None of us kids had a middle name. We were lucky we had any name at all. By the time my mother got around to naming one, there was another on the way.

Just because you're old that doesn't mean you're more forgetful. The same people whose names I can't remember now I couldn't remember fifty years ago. . .

Much later in life, though, Gracie made a major contribution to the opera world. She stayed out of it.

Sex is the Universal Language in which nobody speaks; they don't have to.

Sex has been around for a long time. You may not believe this, but it was around before I was.

There's nothing wrong with making love with the light on. Just make sure the car door is closed.

If I paid $3 or $4 for a cigar, first I'd sleep with it.

When I die I intend to take my music with me. I don't know what's out there, but I want to make sure it's in my key.

People are always asking me how much I'm worth. Well, all I can say is, I've got enough money to last me the rest of my life. As long as I die in the next 20 minutes.

When they saw me walking down the street smoking a cigar, they'd say, 'Hey, that 14-year-old kid may be going places.' Of course it's also a good prop on the stage ... When you can't think of what you're supposed to say next, you can puff on your cigar until you think of your next line.

I use the cigar for timing purposes. If I tell a joke, I smoke as long as they laugh and when they stop laughing I take the cigar out of my mouth and start my next joke.

Life's but a day at most.

Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning, and you can't wait to finish your breakfast. You can't wait to do your exercises. You can't wait to put on your clothes. You can't wait to get out. And you can't wait to come home, because the soup is hot.

Say Goodnight Gracie.

Money is the root of all evil.' Then we hear, 'A fool and his money are soon parted.' What are they talking about? If money is so evil, shouldn't it be, 'A wise man and his money are soon parted'? And another thing, how does a fool get money in the first place? I know some fools who have a lot of money, but they won't tell me how they got it, and I won't tell them.

I thought to myself, 'why not write a bestseller?' In the first place, more people buy them and more people read them. You make more money and it doesn’t take any more time to write a bestseller than it does to write a book nobody buys.

I was always taught to respect my elders and I've now reached the age when I don't have anybody to respect.

I'd say that about 82 percent of what I write is bad, but don't go by me; I'm as bad a judge as I am a writer. Look, if it were all good, you'd be paying twice as much for this book. So relax, read it, and if you don't enjoy it, remember that you're saving money.

There are many ways to die in bed, but the best way is not alone.

If I paid ten dollars for a cigar, first I'd make love to it, then I'd smoke it.

How did I ever get sick? I've already had everything.

I would read Playboy more often, but my glasses keep steaming up.

A married couple that plays cards together is just a fight that hasn't started yet.

I smoke cigars because at my age if I don't have something to hang on to I might fall down.

I did go to school - my kind of school. When I was a kid I went out ... and you meet people. You talk to them. Anybody says something that makes sense, it stays with you, rubs off on you. That kind of school.

Joy is obtaining a big, loving, caring shut-knit household in yet another town.

I'd rather be over the hill than under it.

I'd rather be a flop at show business than to be a success at something I didn't like.

If you were married to Marilyn Monroe, you'd cheat with some ugly girl.

Being an actor is easy, just picture someone in a room and you outside waiting for your cue to go in. Elliot Gould's been trying that for forty years.

If you stay in the business long enough and get to be old enough, you get to be new again.

What actresses do today when they appear on the screen is what they did once upon a time for getting to appear on the screen.

Well, anybody can be a straight man if he hears well. You just have to wait for laughs. A straight man just repeats the questions and the comedian gets the laughs and you just wait for them and don't let them die completely at the tail end of the laugh.

Critics are eunuchs at a gang bang.

I've been a straight man for so many years that from force of habit I repeat everything. I went out fishing with a fellow the other day and he fell overboard. He yelled, Help! Help! Help! so I said, Help? Help? Help? And while I was waiting for him to get his laugh, he drowned.

It's one of the old show business axioms. No matter how successful you've been, there's always a younger and sexier seal coming along.

When Jack Benny has a party, you not only bring your own scotch, you bring your own rocks.

I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than most western countries.

Take care not to wear stripes that are out of sync with your wrinkles.

This is all so exciting I've decided to keep making one movie every 36 years.

The happiest people I know are the ones that are still working. The saddest are the ones who are retired. Very few performers retire on their own. It's usually because no one wants them. Six years ago Sinatra announced his retirement. He's still working.

In what other business can a guy my age drink martinis, smoke cigars and sing? I think all people who retire ought to go into show business. I've been retired all my life.

A young mind in a healthy body is a wonderful thing. Especially for an old man with an open night.

When we played the back end of a horse we always knew that if we worked hard and did a good job we could become the front end.

Young. Old. Just words. Inside we feel like our shoe size.

I never go jogging, it makes me spill my martini.

By [age] 93, I had shrunk quite a lot. My car was known as the Phantom Cadillac. People would see it whizzing by and they would swear there was no driver.

At home we ate fish every Friday, as Catholics were then supposed to do. Being Jewish, I compromised. I wore a hat when I ate fish, out of respect for my own religion and the fish's family.

I'm onstage for an hour.I do an hour of stand-up. Actually, I do 10 minutes standing up and 50 minutes sitting in a chair. Oh, occasionally, I stand up again to do a dance or put over a song. But mostly I sit down. A great invention, sitting down.

My major contribution to the format was to suggest that I be able to step out of the plot and speak directly to the audience, and then be able to go right back into the action. That was an original idea of mine; I know it was because I originally stole it from Thornton Wilder's play Our Town.

Yale men do not like to be told anything by people who didn't go to Yale. The closest I came to Yale was once I had one of their padlocks.

I like women to be attracted to me. See, when you get 60 years old, and they know you're 60, the only women you can get are 55-year-old women, and I like younger women.

Sex can be fun after eighty, after ninety, and after lunch!

She didn't need to go to acting school to learn that the essence of acting is to act like you're not acting.

I worried about playing God (in the movie Oh God). We're about the same age, but we grew up in different neighborhoods.