Fred Allen Quotes & Sayings

After quitting radio I was able to live on the money I saved on aspirins. — Fred Allen

My uncle is a Southern planter. He's an undertaker in Alabama. — Fred Allen

I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin. — Fred Allen

English coffee tastes like water that has been squeezed out of a wet sleeve. — Fred Allen

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure. — Fred Allen

Three million frogs' legs are served in Paris - daily. Nobody knows what became of the rest of the frogs. — Fred Allen

A psychiatrists is the next man you start talking to after you start talking to yourself. — Fred Allen

California is a great place to live if you're an orange. — Fred Allen

It was once rumored that fledgling executives walked around their offices backwards so they wouldn't have to face an issue. — Fred Allen

On ships they call them barnacles; in business they attach themselves to desks and are called vice presidents. — Fred Allen

I play a musical instrument a little, but only for my own amazement. — Fred Allen

He dreamed he was eating shredded wheat and woke up to find the mattress half gone. — Fred Allen

Television is the triumph of machine over people. — Fred Allen

Father Time is the make-up man responsible for the physical changes that determine the parts the average actor is to play. — Fred Allen

I don't have to look up my family tree, because I know that I'm the sap. — Fred Allen

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars. — Fred Allen

An income tax form is like a laundry list - either way you lose your shirt. — Fred Allen

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. — Fred Allen

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners. — Fred Allen

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there. — Fred Allen

Success is like dealing with your kid or teaching your wife to drive. Sooner or later you'll end up in the police station. — Fred Allen

Imitation is the sincerest form of television. — Fred Allen

Radio is called a medium because it is rare that anything is well done. — Fred Allen

He's so small, he's a waste of skin. — Fred Allen

A group of people who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done — Fred Allen

A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 AM and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 PM to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch. — Fred Allen

Television is a medium because anything well done is rare. — Fred Allen

Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making. — Fred Allen

If criticism had any power to harm, the skunk would be extinct by now. — Fred Allen

My hometown was so dull that one time the tide went out and never came back. — Fred Allen

An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer. — Fred Allen

Televisio is a vehicle that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything. — Fred Allen

Vaudeville could not vouch for the honesty, the integrity, or the mentality of the individuals who collectively made up the horde the medium embraced. All the human race demands of its members is that they be born. That is all vaudeville demanded. You just had to be born. You could be ignorant and be a star. You could be a moron and be wealthy. The elements that went to make up vaudeville were combed from the jungles, the four corners of the world, the intelligentsia and the subnormal. — Fred Allen

With the advance of refrigeration, I hope that along with the frozen foods someday we will have frozen conversation. A person will be able to keep a frozen promise indefinitely. — Fred Allen

I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy. — Fred Allen

A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better. — Fred Allen

All I know about humour is that I don't know anything about it. — Fred Allen

The S.S. Sierra was a ten-thousand-ton vessel. Today, lifeboats bigger than the Sierra are found on the Queen Mary and other luxury liners. — Fred Allen

He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both eyes. — Fred Allen

I'm a little hoarse tonight. I've been living in Chicago for the past two months, and you know how it is, yelling for help on the way home every night. Things are so tough in Chicago that at Easter time, for bunnies the little kids use porcupines. — Fred Allen

Television is a triumph of equipment over people, and the minds that control it are so small that you could put them in a gnat's navel with room left over for two caraway seeds and an agent's heart. — Fred Allen

If the grass is greener in the other fellow's yard- let him worry about cutting it. — Fred Allen

Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great. — Fred Allen

I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back. — Fred Allen

When Jack Benny plays the violin, it sounds as though the strings are still in the cat. — Fred Allen

He always had a chip on his shoulder that he was ready to use to kindle an argument. — Fred Allen

If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race. — Fred Allen

In show business, more showgirls are kept than promises. — Fred Allen

A gentleman is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on. — Fred Allen

All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter. — Fred Allen

Some movie stars wear their sunglasses even in church. They're afraid God might recognize them and ask for autographs. — Fred Allen

The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed. — Fred Allen

Condensed milk is wonderful. I don't see how they can get a cow to sit down on those little cans. — Fred Allen

I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man. — Fred Allen

Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission. — Fred Allen

He has no idea what it was like to grow up in the South, where you had to hold your head down. — Fred Allen

Cocktail party: A gathering held to enable forty people to talk about themselves at the same time. The man who remains after the liquor is gone is the host. — Fred Allen

An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission. — Fred Allen

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion. — Fred Allen

The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference. — Fred Allen

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done. — Fred Allen

Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all. — Fred Allen

The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion. — Fred Allen

A comedian who starts talking to himself becomes his own audience. This is fatal. — Fred Allen

The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret. — Fred Allen

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to be well-known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. — Fred Allen

My agent gets 10 percent of everything I get, except the blinding headaches. — Fred Allen

To a newspaperman, a human being is an item with skin wrapped around it. — Fred Allen

I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. — Fred Allen

Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent. — Fred Allen

A human being is nothing but a story with skin around it. — Fred Allen

Everywhere outside New York City is Bridgeport, Connecticut. — Fred Allen

Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year. — Fred Allen

Hollywood is a great place if you're an orange. — Fred Allen

During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk. — Fred Allen

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi. — Fred Allen

If children could vote, Jesse Jackson would be our next president. — Fred Allen

She used to be a teacher but she has no class now. — Fred Allen

You only live once. But if you work it right, once is enough. — Fred Allen

California is a fine place to live, if you happen to be an orange. — Fred Allen

It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads to your hips. — Fred Allen

What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement. — Fred Allen

A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done. — Fred Allen

The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows the average man can see much better than he can think- Ladies' Home JournalI'd rather have two girls at seventeen than one at thirty-four — Fred Allen

The average vice-president is a form of executive fungus that attaches itself to a desk. On a boat this growth would be called a barnacle. — Fred Allen

The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand. — Fred Allen

An actor's success has the life expectancy of a small boy about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match. — Fred Allen

It is probably not love that makes the world go around, but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners recognize their dependence on each other for the achievement of shared and private goals. — Fred Allen

Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you. — Fred Allen

My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense. — Fred Allen

There are two kinds of jokes - funny jokes and Jack Benny jokes. — Fred Allen

I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can't remember what the third thing is. — Fred Allen

The world is a grindstone and life is your nose — Fred Allen

I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered in me and I started shaking. And then I walked back into the house and my wife asked, 'What's the matter?' and I said 'I don't feel good.' And tears - uncontrollable tears - was coming out of my eyes. And she said, 'What's the matter?' And I said 'I just thought about that execution I did two days ago, and everybody else's that I was involved with.' And what it was something triggered within and it just - everybody - all of these executions all of a sudden sprung forward. — Fred Allen

He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in my goose. — Fred Allen

I like long walks, especially when they're taken by people who annoy me. — Fred Allen

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart. — Fred Allen