Berle Quotes & Sayings

I was always a fan of the old-style comics. I loved vaudeville. I loved Milton Berle, Dick Shawn, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles, Charlie Callas, all those guys. Hilarious. I love the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies, and Abbott & Costello. My television influences were 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' 'Benny Hill,' and 'Hee Haw.' — Larry The Cable Guy

I never stole a joke in my life. I just find them before they're lost. — Milton Berle

My brother applied for work, but was told by the company that it had more employees than it needed. My brother said, "Don't worry. The little bit of work I do won't be noticed !!!" — Milton Berle

Money can't buy you happiness. It just helps you look for it in more places. — Milton Berle

I gave my wife a gift certificate for Christmas. She ran out to exchange it for a bigger size. — Milton Berle

Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I. — Jerry Lewis

Valentine's Day - a nice holiday because it's the first day of the rest of your wife. — Milton Berle

Experience is what you have after you've forgotten her name. — Milton Berle

We owe a lot to Thomas Edison-if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight. — Milton Berle

Why are we honoring this man? Have we run out of human beings? — Milton Berle

There were some television sets back in the '50s, but they were expensive. People would gather at the rich guy's apartment down the hall to watch Milton Berle on his 10-inch black-and-white screen. — Al Feldstein

I just read about a schoolteacher who got hurt. She was grading papers on a curve! — Milton Berle

I really doubt whether evolution ever works, how then come Mothers have only two hands — Milton Berle

At the Christmas party, the secretary with the long red hair ate three pickles, and four salesmen panicked. — Milton Berle

The only place success comes before is in the dictionary — Milton Berle

I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's sixth husband. I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't know how to make it interesting. — Milton Berle

They've finally comes up with the perfect office computer. If it makes a mistake, it blames another computer. — Milton Berle

The only ones who like Milton Berle are his mother - and the public. — Walter Winchell

She wanted an Italian sports car - with the sport still in it. — Milton Berle

Our local department store had two Santas - one for regular kids and one for kids who wanted ten toys or less. — Milton Berle

Laughter is the best medicine in the world. — Milton Berle

I have a file of four million jokes ... I have them cross-indexed. Whatever subject you want, I have a joke on it. — Milton Berle

It's rough to go through life with your contents looking as if they settled during shipping. — Milton Berle

My wife calls our waterbed the Dead Sea. — Milton Berle

Folk who don't know why America is the Land of Promise should be here during an election campaign. — Milton Berle

A young man fills out an application for a job and does well until he gets to the last question, "Who Should we notify in case of an accident?" He mulls it over and then writes, "Anybody in sight!" — Milton Berle

My wife and I have a perfect understanding. I don't try to run her life, and I don't try to run mine. — Milton Berle

I just bought a great gift for my boss - a leaky ant farm. — Milton Berle

What an orchestra! They just sit there, but their minds are thousands of miles away with their bookies. — Milton Berle

I don't mind personal insults, but when you insult the jokes that I tell you're insulting Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Burns and Allen, Trevor McGee and Molly Picon. — Milton Berle

In Washington, a man gets up to speak and doesn't say a thing, and the other men disagree with him for three hours. — Milton Berle

I bought my kid an educational toy to help him make it through life. No matter how you put it together, it's wrong. — Milton Berle

I know why superman left krypton. Earth was the only place where he could get steriods! — Milton Berle

Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient — Milton Berle

At eighty-two, I feel like a twenty-year-old, but, unfortunately, there's never one around. — Milton Berle

Most attorneys practice law because it gives them a grand and glorious feeling. You give them a grand - and they feel glorious. — Milton Berle

You're aging when your actions creak louder than your words. — Milton Berle

My son really has the spirit of Valentine's Day. When he was in college, he used to send his mother a heart-shaped box of laundry. — Milton Berle

There are a lot of things money can't buy. Not one of them is on my son's list. — Milton Berle

One of those Christmas songs says, "You better not shout, you better not cry, you better not pout." How's my wife going to get along? — Milton Berle

Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders a pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies. — Milton Berle

My sister-in-law found a real surprise in her stockings - my brother. — Milton Berle

At Christmas you can get real bargains. I saw one item marked down ten dollars. It was a yacht. — Milton Berle

Just remember, golf is flog spelled backwards. — Milton Berle

A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours. — Milton Berle

Marriage is one of the few institutions that allow a man to do as his wife pleases. — Milton Berle

I can't tell you his age, but when he was born the wonder drug was Mercurochrome. — Milton Berle

My wife is a real Puritan. She thinks licking the stamp on the envelope of a Valentine is foreplay. — Milton Berle

This man's wife told him, "For Christmas, surprise me." On Christmas Eve he leaned over where she was sleeping and said, "Boo!" — Milton Berle

I bought my son an indestructible toy. Yesterday he left it in the driveway. It broke my car. — Milton Berle

A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong. — Milton Berle

When opportunity doesn't knock, create a door — Milton Berle

Like with Berle, he was always trying to steal the scene, get a little extra. — Phil Silvers

Sir, I didn't deserve the grade you gave me on this test. Do you know a lower one? — Milton Berle

You can't believe everything you hear, but it's fun to repeat it anyway. — Milton Berle

An insult is mean or unkind. Milton Berle called me the Sultan of Insult, and I was called the King of Insult. But the guy that gave me the best title - and I use it to this day - was Johnny Carson. He called me Mr. Warmth. — Don Rickles

Valentine's Day is like Armistice Day - you declare a truce. — Milton Berle

I made a terrible mistake last Christmas. My wife made me swear that I wouldn't give her a fancy gift. And I didn't. — Milton Berle

The last time I saw Marilyn was in late 1959, when I appeared in Let's Make Love at Fox. The wide-eyed Marilyn I had first known was gone. This Marilyn was more beautiful than ever. — Milton Berle

I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh. — Marlo Thomas

When I was in school, one of my teachers was crazy about me. I once heard her tell another teacher, "I wish he was my kid for one day!" — Milton Berle

Now a 'funnyman' can get a laugh before opening his mouth - looking funny. Lou Costello was one of your great funnymen. Harry Langdon, Larry Semon; they were all funnymen - they looked funny. W.C. Fields was never a comedian. Slim Summerville was a comedian, yet looked funny. Now if you have both attributes, you are in good shape. — Milton Berle

War toys are scary. They have a rocket launcher with a bayonet attached, in case you miss. — Milton Berle

It was a tough school. The kids on the debating team took steroids! — Milton Berle

Comedian Milton Berle once said, 'If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door!' In — Ashwin Sanghi

Some kids want to know why the teachers get paid when it's the kids who have to do all the work. — Milton Berle

My wife can't figure out what to buy me. What do you give a man who's had everything up to here? — Milton Berle

I like to think of myself as the middleman between Fred Allen and Henny Youngman. — Milton Berle

I bought my mother-in-law a beautiful chair for Christmas, but she won't let me plug it in. — Milton Berle

I'd rather be a 'could-be' if I cannot be an 'are' because a 'could-be' is a 'maybe' who is reaching for a star. I'd rather be a 'has-been' than a 'might-have-been' by far; for a 'might-have-been' has never been, but a 'has' was once an 'are. — Milton Berle

The choreographer for the Milton Berle show wanted me to audition. I walked away from that. — Danny Aiello

Talk about cheap - on Christmas Eve, my neighbour shoots off three blanks and tells his kids Santa Claus just committed suicide. — Milton Berle

The problem with life is, by the time you can read women like a book, your library card has expired. — Milton Berle

I just filled out my income tax forms. Who says you can't get killed by a blank? — Milton Berle

Radio ... that wonderful invention by which I can reach millions of people ... who fortunately can't reach me. — Milton Berle

My son gave me a nice bottle of cologne - Eau de Owe. — Milton Berle

I remember tap-dancing and singing in front of the TV when I was a kid, telling my dad to stop watching Ed Sullivan or Milton Berle and watch me. — Andie MacDowell

Every year my boss used to give me a bottle of expensive brandy because I'd told him that my doctor suggested a drink once in a while. This year my boss gave me the name of a new doctor. — Milton Berle

Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up 'vaudeville' in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says 'Milton Berle' - and he made it just a tremendous party. — Alan King

If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands? — Milton Berle

I don't date women my age. There aren't any. — Milton Berle

I'd seen all the great entertainers by the time I was 14 or 15. My mother was artistic. My father was a bookmaker, so he had access to all those nightclubs, and he was smitten by certain artists, and we would go see them. We'd see comics like Sid Caesar and Milton Berle - those kind of artists - many of whom I worked with later in my life. — Lainie Kazan

Money can't buy you happiness, but it helps you look for it in a lot more places. — Milton Berle

I gave my wife a twenty-five-dollar gift certificate. She used it as a down payment on a mink coat. — Milton Berle

Jews don't drink much because it interferes with their suffering. — Milton Berle

I bought a Christmas tree for twenty dollars. When I came home the next day, my wife was wearing it in her hair. — Milton Berle

She was nice to him on Valentine's Day. She gave him a heart-shaped rash. — Milton Berle

I take New Years with a grain of salt and three aspirins. — Milton Berle

People say I owe a lot to television. The fact is I was a star long before television. What TV made me is unemployed. — Milton Berle

I bought my son a bat for Christmas. On New Year's it flew away. — Milton Berle

My wife wants something foreign for Christmas - like a Mexican divorce. — Milton Berle

My wife sent me a Valentine card that said, "Take my heart, take my lips, take my soul." That's just like her. She kept the good parts for herself. — Milton Berle

My son has a big Christmas problem - what do you buy for a father who has everything and you're using it? — Milton Berle

Do you want to feel insecure? Count the number of Christmas cards you sent out, and then count those you received. — Milton Berle

The only thing that can break a piece of Valentine candy is another piece of Valentine candy. — Milton Berle

I live to laugh, and I laugh to live. — Milton Berle

It's amazing how fast later comes when you buy now. — Milton Berle

My wife and I were shopping for the whole family. In the music department my wife said, "Let's get your nephew a set of drums. That's what your brother did to us last year." — Milton Berle

He was such a bad writer, they revoked his poetic license. — Milton Berle

You don't need to travel, laughter is an instant vacation — Milton Berle