Best of Tonight

Steve Allen

• Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless.
• The hair is real; it’s the head that’s fake.
• If there is a God, the phrase that must disgust him is - holy war.
• In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.
• Nothing is better than the unintended humor of realit

• 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.
• I used to be a heavy gambler. But now I just make mental bets. That’s how I lost my mind.
• 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.
• Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.
• …we are entitled to make almost any reasonable assumption, but should resist making conclusions until evidence requires that we do so.

Jack Paar

• Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
• Looking back, my life seems like one long obstacle race, with me as the chief obstacle.
• Poor people have more fun than rich people, they say; and I notice it’s the rich people who keep saying it.
• In an interview Errol Flynn said that his hobby was acting but he doesn’t have time for it.
• Personally, I like those mystery shows. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been crazy about blood and detectives and murder. Maybe I was born with a silver knife in my back.

• To those of you affected by the rent control bill welcome to the great outdoors.
• I have never seen a bad television program, because I refuse to. God gave me a mind, and a wrist that turns things off.
• I’m complicated, sentimental, lovable, honest, loyal, decent, generous, likable, and lonely. My personality is not split; it’s shredded.
• One gets the impression that this is how Ernest Hemingway would have written had he gone to Vassar.
• Statistics show that many people watch our show from the bedroom. And people you ask into your bedroom have to be more interesting than those you ask into your living room. I kid you not!

Johnny Carson

• Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn’t grow up can be vice president.
• For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
• I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.
• If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.
• The Hollywood tradition I like best is called “sucking up to the stars.”

• Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.
• I know you’ve been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvelous. It must be very inexpensive.
• If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners.
• Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die.
• When turkeys mate they think of swans.

Jay Leno

• How would it be if we discovered that aliens only stopped by earth to let their kids take a leak?
• Here’s something to think about: How come you never see a headline like ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?
• If God doesn’t destroy Hollywood Boulevard, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.
• If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
• Politics is just show business for ugly people.

• Today is Valentine’s Day - or, as men like to call it, Extortion Day!
• You’re not famous until my mother has heard of you.
• For the first time in history, sex is more dangerous than the cigarette afterward.
• The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.
• You can’t stay mad at somebody who makes you laugh.