Top 500 Dave Barry Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “Beneath their surface differences, there are a lot of deep, underlying differences.”

— Dave Barry

402. “My son wouldn’t go get heroin. If he did or didn’t, it wouldn’t have anything to do with whether it was legal or illegal.”

— Dave Barry

403. “Someone was tapping on the window.”

— Dave Barry

404. “People don’t think of writers as sex objects. The women who write to me and suggest that we ought to have sex usually turn out to be, like, eighty. And their letters always end with, “Just joking.””

— Dave Barry

405. “We’re deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right in his bowl full of jelly.”

— Dave Barry

406. “Derangement is the only possible explanation for owning a cat, an animal whose preferred mode of communication is to sink its claws three-quarters of an inch into your flesh.”

— Dave Barry

407. “I liked making people laugh, and I decided I was an atheist early on. My Dad was all right with that. We argued about it all the time, but it was good-natured. He was the most open-minded human being I’ve ever known.”

— Dave Barry

408. “In the morning always in the morning the moment comes when you are shuffling, sleep-slowed down the dawn-dim hallway shuffling in your nightdress it comes so sudden so cold so suddenly cold when it comes the dog nose in your butt.”

— Dave Barry

409. “She goes to Frederick’s of Hollywood at the mall and purchases an explicit lingerie outfit so sheer that you could read an appliance warranty through it in an unlit closet.”

— Dave Barry

410. “People don’t like it when you make fun of a celebrity. When you make fun of a celebrity, you’ll hear from really loyal fans of that celebrity.”

— Dave Barry

411. “There are a number of people without whom I could not have written this book, but I hope you don’t hold that against them. They are all fine people, and they had no idea how it would turn out.”

— Dave Barry

412. “The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form.”

— Dave Barry

413. “If everybody were a guy, the human race could easily get by on less than one twentieth the current number of shoes.”

— Dave Barry

414. “It was you readers who really came through, proving once again that when the American people decide to “get involved” in a problem, it is best not to let them have any sharp implements.”

— Dave Barry

415. “We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.”

— Dave Barry

416. “If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.”

— Dave Barry

417. “For 41 years I have gone with a very natural hair “look” that was originally popularized by coconuts.”

— Dave Barry

418. “I do not mean to suggest for a moment that all it takes to be a top executive is a custom-tailored European suit. You also need the correct shirt and tie.”

— Dave Barry

419. “Fortunately the bad guys had the tactical intelligence of a waffle iron, so the hero was able to outsmart them by ducking behind some rocks, then putting his hat on a stick and holding it.”

— Dave Barry

420. “Eugene is located in western Oregon, approximately 278 billion miles from anything.”

— Dave Barry

421. “When doctors describe pain as experiencing “discomfort,” it’s like saying Hiroshima experienced “urban renewal”.”

— Dave Barry

422. “I will vote for the first candidate who promises to use nuclear missiles against LinkedIn.”

— Dave Barry

423. “The story of the eighties will be the story of the Reagan administration and the many men and women who served in it, some of whom are already out on parole.”

— Dave Barry

424. “If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you’d find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies.”

— Dave Barry

425. “I was a middle-of-the-road Democrat more than anything else. I know I voted for Carter. Watergate taught me how bad the Republicans were.”

— Dave Barry

426. “I was a young person once, shortly after the polar ice caps retreated, and I distinctly recall believing that virtually all adults were clueless goobers.”

— Dave Barry

427. “Flying from the United States to Tokyo takes approximately as long as law school.”

— Dave Barry

428. “Basically Ken is a very gentle, home-loving person. I remember when one of his stick insects had a knee infection. He stayed up all night rubbing it with germoline and banging its head on the table.”

— Dave Barry

429. “The Democrats believe that if God did not want them to raise taxes, He would not have created the Internal Revenue Service.”

— Dave Barry

430. “We idolized the Beatles, except for those of us who idolized the Rolling Stones, who in those days still had many of their original teeth.”

— Dave Barry

431. “In modern America, food is abundant everywhere except aboard commercial airplanes.”

— Dave Barry

432. “The Sixties are now considered a historical period, just like the Roman Empire.”

— Dave Barry

433. “Granted, this system is insane, but we must not let sanity stand in the way of airport security.”

— Dave Barry

434. “Baby’s room should be close enough to your room so that you can hear baby cry, unless you want to get some sleep, in which case baby’s room should be in Peru.”

— Dave Barry

435. “Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.”

— Dave Barry

436. “I’m not the only taxpayer who has no idea what he’s sending to the IRS. This year, only 28 percent of all Americans will prepare their own tax returns, according to a voice in my head that invents accurate-sounding statistics.”

— Dave Barry

437. “Instead of a permit system or regulations, the Forest Service needs to reduce worldwide population growth to limit the number of visitors to wilderness.”

— Dave Barry

438. “Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.”

— Dave Barry

439. “Be advised that there is no parking in Europe.”

— Dave Barry

440. “Never try to put all the chemicals in the entire world in your body at the same time.”

— Dave Barry

441. “The other major kind of computer is the “Apple,” which I do not recommend, because it is a wuss-o-rama New-Age computer you basically just plug in and use.”

— Dave Barry

442. “There’s a test they can do to determine a baby’s gender ahead of time; I think they insert a tiny photo of Leonardo DiCaprio into the uterus, and if the baby punches it, it’s a boy.”

— Dave Barry

443. “France: As a professional journalist, I like the idea of a society where it is considered an acceptable occupation to basically sit around and drink.”

— Dave Barry

444. “Hardware: where the people in your company’s software section will tell you the problem is. Software: where the people in your company’s hardware section will tell you the problem is.”

— Dave Barry

445. “The United States tried, by depressing the clutch of diplomacy and downshifting the gearshift lever of rhetoric, to remain neutral, but it became increasingly obvious that the nation was going to get into a war, especially since it was almost 1812.”

— Dave Barry

446. “The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture finished and put inside boxes.”

— Dave Barry

447. “It is an inconvenience, being located in a city where taxes are ludicrously high, where you pay twice your annual income to rent an apartment that could easily be carried on a commercial airline flight.”

— Dave Barry

448. “What I like best about the telephone is that it keeps you in touch with people, particularly people who want to sell you magazine subscriptions in the middle of the night.”

— Dave Barry

449. “This is true; virtually all edible substances, and many automotive products, are now marketed as being low-fat or fat-free. Americans are obsessed with fat content.”

— Dave Barry

450. “Alan Zweibel is the funniest writer in the world. He might be even funnier when he’s naked, but I’m afraid to find out.”

— Dave Barry