Robert orben quotes

Happiness is contagious. Be a carrier!!

Do you realize what would happen if Moses were alive today? He'd go up to Mount Sinai, come back with the Ten Commandments, and spend the next eight years trying to get published.

Lincoln was known to have walked miles to borrow books, to get the most rudimentary form of education. So what do we do on his birthday? We close the schools!

President Ford used humor a great deal.

Humor starts like a wildfire, but then continues on, smoldering, smoldering for years.

If somebody accuses you in a story of being a crook, you can demand that they prove it. But if a comic says it and you protest, people say, 'What's the matter, you can't take a joke?

They say kids today don't know the value of a dollar. They certainly do know the value of a dollar. That's why they ask for five.

To reduce stress, avoid excitement. Spend more time with your spouse.

I always wondered why babies spend so much time sucking their thumbs. Then I tasted baby food.

The Playboy Calendar this year has some tiptop models. Any more top and they'd tip.

I may be forty, but every morning when I get up, I feel like a twenty-year-old. Unfortunately, there's never one around.

Realists know where they're going. Dreamers have already been there.

An economist is someone who knows all the answers to last years' questions.

Live your life so that if someone says 'Be yourself' it's good advice.

Happiness is a very small desk and a very big wastebasket.

A compliment is verbal sunshine.

Remember the days when you let your child have some chocolate if he finished his cereal? Now, chocolate is one of the cereals.

All that means is that something devastating can happen to you today or to your family & all you can do is cry about it or panic or just be grief-stricken about it; but a year or two from now or maybe ten years from now, or maybe two months or two days, you might be able to see the humor in that problem.

If you can laugh together, you can work together.

You wouldn't want Alan Greenspan to write the instructions for assembling a beach chair.

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains.... But it can put mountains where there are none. Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

Spring is God's way of saying, 'One more time!'

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

Humor is the most honest of emotions. Applause for a speech can be insincere, but with humor, if the audience doesn't like it there's no faking it.

I'd be surprised if Ronald Reagan doesn't run again. To us it's a second term. To him it's a double feature.

New Yorkers are so impersonal, if it wasn't for muggings there wouldn't be any contact at all!

Did you ever get to wondering if taxation without representation might have been cheaper?

Have you noticed when you go on a diet, the first thing you lose is your temper.

Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards.

A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that 'individuality' is the key to success.

Thanks to modern medicine we are no longer forced to endure prolonged pain, disease, discomfort and wealth.

If you can get someone to laugh with you, they will be more willing to identify with you, listen to you. It parts the waters.

I love to watch those old movies on late-night television, particularly when a couple get up from a champagne dinner in a posh restaurant and the hero hands the waiter $3. But the best part is when he says, "Keep the change."

A toast to the weapons of war, may they rust in peace.

We have enough people who tell it like it is - now we could use a few who tell it like it can be.

I had a terrible fight with my wife on New Year's Eve. She called me a procrastinator. So I finished addressing the Christmas cards and left.

The best birthdays of all are those that haven't arrived yet.

A sigh is an amplifier for people who suffer in silence.

More than ever before, Americans are suffering from back problems: back taxes, back rent, back auto payments.

Very few people ever meet celebrities. All we really know is what we read about them and the most memorable lines are jokes. That's how we tend to define what we think of a public figure.

It may be the way the cookie crumbles on Madison Avenue, but in Hong Kong its the way the egg rolls.

What bothers me about TV is that it tends to take our minds off our minds.

Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't.

Did you ever figure to be living in a time when your check is good, but the bank bounces?

The true test of humility is whether you can say grace before eating crow.

Humor is a marvelous communications tool, as Reagan has demonstrated so well. He has weathered many a storm that others might not have. With Reagan, people just say, 'There he goes again.' A sense of humor allows a president to back off a little from the tensions of the moment and take a calmer view of things.

Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.

Do you realize that in the past sixty years, the only foreigners the French have been able to drive out are American tourists?

I value people with a conscience. It's like a beeper from God.

Did you ever see that painting the Mona Lisa. It always reminds me of a reporter listening to a politician.

Love is so confusing - you tell a girl she looks great and what's the first thing you do? Turn out the lights!

Sociologists say that going to the movies is a bonding experience. It probably has to do with the way you feet stick to the floor.

When we laugh we temporarily give ourselves over to the person who makes us laugh.

THe world now has so many problems that if Moses had come down from Mount Sinai today, the two tablets he'd carry would be aspirin.

Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.

Planned obsolescence is not really a new concept. God used it with people.

It's mandatory in this day and age to be considered to have a sense of humor and to demonstrate it. You're not paying me for a joke, You're paying me for the right joke.

Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?

It always seems to someone outside the business that it is very difficult to write for a comedy show because it must be done quickly. Actually, it is much easier to write this humor than to do a joke or a show from scratch, because the audience knows the plot. Just mention what is going on and then deliver the punch line.

I should warn you that underneath these clothes I'm wearing boxer shorts and I know how to use them.

Did you hear about the woman who sent out 40,000 Valentine Cards doused in perfume and signed, "Guess Who?" She's a divorce lawyer.

I don't want to say anything about my kids...but I go to PTA meetings under an assumed name!

Sports like baseball, basketball, and hockey develop muscles. That's why Americans have the strongest eyes in the world.

These detective series on TV always end at precisely the right moment-after the criminal is arrested and before the court turns him loose.

I got a Valentine's Day card from my girl. It said, 'Take my heart! Take my arms! Take my lips!' Which is just like her. Keeping the best part for herself.

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.

As much as we admire all the characteristics of a Ronald Reagan, as soon as something goes wrong, people will hate those same characteristics.

Don't smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much or work too much. We're all on the road to the grave - but there's no need to be in the passing lane.

Nowadays, you cannot be a very Effective political figure without Having a demonstrable sense of humor. People take to it.

In prehistoric times, mankind often had only two choices in crisis situations: fight or flee. In modern times, humor offers us a third alternative; fight, flee - or laugh.

Inflation is the crabgrass in your savings.

I'm beginning to wonder about my broker. Yesterday I told him to buy a hundred shares of A.T.&T. He said, 'Would you spell that?'

Wall Street is where prophets tell us what will happen and profits tell us what did happen.

Do your kids a favor - don't have any.

Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away.

There are days when it takes all you've got just to keep up with the losers.

I'd like to say a few words about one of the most popular concepts in the modern education--show and tell. Show and Tell is a device created by grammar schools to communicate family secrets to 32 other families before 9:15 am in the morning.

I don't see why religion and science can't cooperate. What's wrong with using a computer to count our blessings?

Here's to all volunteers, those dedicated people who believe in all work and no pay.

Anybody with a good sense of humor is one-up on their competition. We respond to somebody who has the ability to make us laugh. It's a bonding influence.

I take my children everywhere, but they always find their way back home.

The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than 30 percent of the people in the world

Wait'll next year! is the favorite cry of baseball fans, football fans, hockey fans, and gardeners.

Noise pollution is a relative thing. In a city, it's a jet plane taking off. In a monastery, it's a pen that scratches.

They're combining that new fertility drug with a birth control pill for people who don't want triplets.

My wife never lies about her age. She just tells everyone she's as old as I am. Then she lies about my age.

Never raise your hand to your children - it leaves your midsection unprotected.

The chance to be seen as a warm, witty guy is too good an opportunity for a politician to miss.

For Father's Day, my kids always give me a bottle of cologne called English Leather. It's appropriate! To them I always smell like a wallet.

Successful salesman: someone who has found a cure for the common cold shoulder.

There are only two kinds of people in this world. The realists and the dreamers. The realists know where they are going and the dreamers have already been there.

Inflation is bringing us true democracy. For the first time in history, luxuries and necessities are selling at the same price.

Time flies. It's up to you to be the navigator.

We're supposed to take our problems to a family adviser. Personally, I've never met a family adviser. They're all off somewhere listening to dirty stories.

It's amazing how important your job is when you want the day off - and how unimportant it is when you want a raise.

Sometimes I get the feeling the whole world is against me, but deep down I know that's not true. Some of the smaller countries are neutral.

It's an awful thing to grow old by yourself. My wife hasn't had a birthday in seven years.

Every speaker has a mouth; An arrangement rather neat. Sometimes it's filled with wisdom. Sometimes it's filled with feet.

Older people shouldn't eat health food, they need all the preservatives they can get.

I understand the big food companies are developing a tearless onion. I think they can do it - after all, they've already given us tasteless bread.

Humor gives presidents the chance to be seen as warm, relaxed persons. Humor reaches out and puts its arm around the listener and says, 'I am one of you, I understand,' and implicitly it promises, 'I will do something about your problems.'

What if the meek inherited the Earth and we had to defend ourselves from Martians?

Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings. The expectations are always high, and the results usually disappointing.

Vacation: When you spend thousands of dollars to see what rain looks like in different parts of the world.

With my luck, if I ever invested in General Motors, they'd bust it to Corporal!

To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so.

I remember when humor was gentle pokes. I used to call it 'arm around the shoulder' humor. Now they go for the jugular and they take no prisoners. It's mean, mean stuff.

To exercise is human; not to is divine.

If at first you don't succeed-try, try again. Don't think of it as failure. Think of it as timed-release success.

The secret of writing comedy is to know where it's all going, then get ahead of it.

Individuality' is the key to success.

A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.

I feel that if God had really wanted us to have enough oil, he would never have given us a Department of Energy.

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.