Top 60 Carol Burnett Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.”

— Carol Burnett

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes, Attitude Quotes, Change Quotes, Self-Esteem Quotes, Positive Inspirational Quotes

2. “When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let go.”

— Carol Burnett

Featured in: Sweet Quotes, Quotes About Dreams, Life Is Short Quotes, Graduation Quotes, Letting Go Quotes

3. “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”

— Carol Burnett

4. “I love to write. I have always loved writing. That was my first love.”

— Carol Burnett

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

5. “I have a great memory.”

— Carol Burnett

6. “I think we’re here for each other.”

— Carol Burnett

7. “We don’t stop going to school when we graduate.”

— Carol Burnett

8. “Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.”

— Carol Burnett

9. “No one ever said life was fair. Just Eventful.”

— Carol Burnett

10. “You have to have faith that there is a reason you go through certain things. I can’t say I’m glad to go through pain, but in a way one must, in order to gain courage and really feel joy.”

— Carol Burnett

11. “Because nobody goes through life without a scar.”

— Carol Burnett

12. “You do have to love your kids enough to let them hate you. But it’s the disease that’s hating you, not them.”

— Carol Burnett

13. “You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That’s an education in itself.”

— Carol Burnett

14. “It’s almost impossible to be funnier than the people in Washington.”

— Carol Burnett

15. “Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.”

— Carol Burnett

16. “I love the writing. I love the idea of typing and seeing it on the computer and printing it out myself and, you know, moving sentences around. I like that.”

— Carol Burnett

17. “I don’t have false teeth. Do you think I’d buy teeth like these?”

— Carol Burnett

18. “It’s also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others. I’ve been helped by acts of kindness from strangers. That’s why we’re here, after all, to help others.”

— Carol Burnett

19. “People invite me to dinner not because I can cook, but because I like to clean up. I get immediate gratification from windex. Yes, I do windows.”

— Carol Burnett

20. “I couldn’t get the laughter out of my head. It wasn’t career. It wasn’t even a choice. It was a calling.”

— Carol Burnett

21. “I don’t eat much meat, fish, or poultry.”

— Carol Burnett

22. “What I like to write about is stuff I know. I don’t think I could write a novel. I don’t think I have it in me to come up with those kinds of characters.”

— Carol Burnett

23. “My interesting diet tips are eat early and don’t nosh between meals. I mean, I can pack it away.”

— Carol Burnett

24. “Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.”

— Carol Burnett

25. “Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.”

— Carol Burnett

26. “I always had a weak chin because we couldn’t afford to correct my bite, which could have been corrected with braces. So the chin was always weak. And I always was – kind of hated my profile. And I thought wouldn’t it be nice someday to feel the rain on your chin without having to look up.”

— Carol Burnett

27. “But I didn’t ask to have somebody nose around in my private life. I didn’t even ask to be famous. All I asked was to be able to earn a living making people laugh.”

— Carol Burnett

28. “If someone tells you that you cannot do something and you believe it, they are right.”

— Carol Burnett

29. “The first time someone said, ‘What are your measurements?’ I answered, ‘37, 24, 38 – but not necessarily in that order.’”

— Carol Burnett

30. “I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don’t work out, that’s when I’ve really learned.”

— Carol Burnett

31. “But I don’t begrudge anybody, because I know how hard it is to have that dream and to make it happen, whether or not it’s just to put a roof over your head and food on the table.”

— Carol Burnett

32. “I can’t tell a joke to save my soul. It’s just not my thing, though I love to listen to jokes.”

— Carol Burnett

33. “I was once asked to do my Tarzan yell at Bergdorf Goodman, and a guard burst in with a gun! Now I only do it under controlled circumstances.”

— Carol Burnett

34. “In ’57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door.”

— Carol Burnett

35. “Our legacy is really the lives we touch, the inspiration we give, altering someone’s plan – if even for a moment – and getting them to think, rage, cry, laugh, argue... Walk around the block, dazed... More than anything, we are remembered for our smiles; the ones we share with our closest and dearest, and the ones we bestow on a total stranger, who needed it RIGHT THEN, and God put you there to deliver. – Carrie Louise Hamilton, dedication page.”

— Carol Burnett

36. “Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a crack in your sidewalk? Having a baby is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.”

— Carol Burnett

37. “I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.”

— Carol Burnett

38. “The audience is never wrong.”

— Carol Burnett

39. “I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy.”

— Carol Burnett

40. “I had a good loud voice and I wasn’t afraid to be goofy or zany.”

— Carol Burnett

41. “My grandmother and I saw an average of eight movies a week, double features, second run.”

— Carol Burnett

42. “My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.”

— Carol Burnett

43. “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t waiting for a scab either to grow or to fall off my knee.”

— Carol Burnett

44. “Well, I don’t know how astute I am, but I did want to be a journalist when I was growing up.”

— Carol Burnett

45. “I’ve always been able to recount things and I have a really good memory about dialog and what people have said before and this and that.”

— Carol Burnett

46. “It costs a lot to sue a magazine, and it’s too bad that we don’t have a system where the losing team has to pay the winning team’s lawyers.”

— Carol Burnett

47. “As far as sitcoms go, I thought Jenna Elfman in ‘Dharma and Greg’ was a wonderful physical comedienne who had great timing.”

— Carol Burnett

48. “I liked myself better when I wasnt me.”

— Carol Burnett

49. “Daddy, when he drank, just became sweeter. There wasn’t a mean thought in his body. I’ve always said he was like a drunk Jimmy Stewart.”

— Carol Burnett

50. “I always felt that I was more of an actress than a – I can’t tell a joke to save my soul, but that I was a comedic actress.”

— Carol Burnett