Bill Cosby
92 quotes
Biography
"There is hope for the future because God has a sense of humor and we are funny to God."
"Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it."
"You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it."
"Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children, my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die."
"A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need advice."
"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
"Now, Richard Pryor was unique. Many misunderstood his humor. He lit up the hallway, but they didn't understand his use of profanity. He didn't use it just to be using it; he used it in the context of his satire."
"No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal."
"And so the dentist says 'Rinse.' So you lean over, and you're lookin' at this miniature toilet bowl."
"Racial humor was about 35% of my act when I first started. But I realized that it was a crutch. What brought it home was when another comedian said to me, 'If you changed color tomorrow, you wouldn't have any material.' He meant it as a put-down, but I took it as a challenge."
"George Carlin is brilliant with words, and Johnny Winters is very creative. It's taking something common and drawing out the humor, being clever with words."
"A sail boat that sails backwards can never see the sun rise."
"If at first you don't succeed, you're about average."
"The weatherman is always right, It's his timing that's off."
"The only thing that you can get into without a lot of trouble is a lot of trouble."
"People putting their clothes on backwards. Isn't that a sign of something going on wrong? Are you not paying attention? People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn't that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?"
"We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out."
"I am not interested in statistics that tell me things are not as bad as they seem. Things are horrible. I have met people crying about what is happening, but there is no solution yet. Our children are trying to tell us something, and we are not listening. I don't care what the statistics say."
"We see a successful, elegant man now, but as a child, an adolescent, his life was not a done deal. Sidney respected his mistakes. When failure came, he never said, "This is too difficult, too hard," he had the resiliency to try again. His life is somewhere between astounding and unbelievable."
"My father walked to school 4 o'clock every morning with no shoes on, uphill, both ways, in 5 feet of snow and he was thankful."
"I know I didn't say anything, but I'm asking your integrity that since I didn't wanna say anything, but I did answer you, in terms of I don't wanna say anything of what value will it have? ... And I would appreciate it if it was scuttled."
"My wife and I have five children, and the reason we have five children is because we do not want six."
"My father established our relationship when I was seven years old. He looked at me and said, "You know, I brought you in this world, and I can take you out. And it don't make no difference to me, I'll make another one look just like you.""
"Carol Burnett put it best when she described labor pains. She said, "Take your bottom lip, and pull it over your head.""
"I said to a guy, I said, "Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?", and he said, "Well, it intensifies your personality." I said, "Yes, but what if you're an asshole?""