Top 120 Dick Van Dyke Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I have four children and I have seven grandkids.”

— Dick Van Dyke

2. “In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.”

— Dick Van Dyke

3. “You have to be able to laugh at yourself. Attitude is almost more important than what happens to you.”

— Dick Van Dyke

4. “We should never judge a day by its weather.”

— Dick Van Dyke

5. “You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can’t spread peanut butter on the jelly.”

— Dick Van Dyke

6. “Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.”

— Dick Van Dyke

7. “Hope is life’s essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning.”

— Dick Van Dyke

8. “There are tribes all over the world who sing and dance every day as part of their lives. And we oughta do that.”

— Dick Van Dyke

9. “Once you get the kids raised and the mortgage paid off and accomplish what you wanted to do in life, there’s a great feeling of: ‘Hey, I’m free as a bird.’”

— Dick Van Dyke

10. “I sing and dance. That’s my job.”

— Dick Van Dyke

11. “I taught Sunday school when I was younger, and ended up an elder in the church, and it just seemed to me that a lot of people who went to church certainly weren’t – the rest of the week – living what I would call an Christian life.”

— Dick Van Dyke

12. “You need someone to love, and something to do that you enjoy, and something to hope for, and that’s enough for me.”

— Dick Van Dyke

13. “The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.”

— Dick Van Dyke

14. “I can’t work with my brother without laughing.”

— Dick Van Dyke

15. “I’m always announcing my retirement. I’m still not retired.”

— Dick Van Dyke

16. “I wanted to be a radio announcer.”

— Dick Van Dyke

17. “I don’t play golf. I have more fun singing and dancing.”

— Dick Van Dyke

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18. “Oh, well, my first love is comedy or singing and dancing.”

— Dick Van Dyke

19. “I never wanted to be an actor and to this day I don’t. I can’t get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.”

— Dick Van Dyke

20. “My favorite unknown movie is ‘The Comic.’”

— Dick Van Dyke

21. “I know friends of mine who have never changed their mind about anything in their lives, despite evidence from all directions. And I think if you can keep an open mind and some understanding, that helps you stay young.”

— Dick Van Dyke

22. “Scripture says you should put aside childish things when you grow up. I take that to mean willfulness, self-centeredness, and things like that – not imagination, creativity, and joyful curiosity.”

— Dick Van Dyke

23. “The most important thing for old guys is never start going down the stairs sideways.”

— Dick Van Dyke

24. “Some people never change their mind through their whole lives, about anything, despite new information that comes in. And now that we know that homosexuality is not a choice, it’s biological, I think we have to love and understand them.”

— Dick Van Dyke

25. “I found out retirement means playing golf, or I don’t know what the hell it means. But to me, retirement means doing what you have fun doing.”

— Dick Van Dyke

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26. “I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He – I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.”

— Dick Van Dyke

27. “I don’t have any children; I have four middle-aged people.”

— Dick Van Dyke

28. “I played a killer twice. Once on ‘Matlock,’ on Andy Griffith’s show, I got to play the killer.”

— Dick Van Dyke

29. “We all need something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.”

— Dick Van Dyke

30. “As wonderful as they were, my parents didn’t teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn’t had a family myself, I probably never would’ve done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.”

— Dick Van Dyke

31. “I’m not a loner. I have to have a life partner.”

— Dick Van Dyke

32. “I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!”

— Dick Van Dyke

33. “Walt Disney and I always said we were two children looking for our inner adults.”

— Dick Van Dyke

34. “They did ask me to do ‘Dancing With The Stars;’ I said I can do one show, but on that show you have to come up with a new number every week, and I told them that I think I’m a little past that stage.”

— Dick Van Dyke

35. “No, I did night clubs right here in Los Angeles. My partner, Phil Erickson, put me in the business, a guy from my home town, a dear friend who we just lost a couple of months ago.”

— Dick Van Dyke

36. “When I auditioned for ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ on Broadway, Gower Champion said, ‘You’ve got the job!’ I said, ‘Mr. Champion, I can’t dance.’ He said, ‘We’ll teach you what you need to know.’”

— Dick Van Dyke

37. “My wife, as proud as she was of me, hated show business for good reasons. There was something about the spouse always being pushed out of the way, shoved aside. She wanted to get away from it.”

— Dick Van Dyke

38. “I was a ‘Laurel and Hardy’ nut. I got to know Laurel at the end of his life, and it was a great thrill for me. He left me his bow tie and derby and told me that if they ever made a movie about him, he’d want me to play him.”

— Dick Van Dyke

39. “I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that’s literally 70 years.”

— Dick Van Dyke

40. “I never had a lot of drive, but because I had family responsibilities, I had a lot of tenacity – the tenacity of a drowning man.”

— Dick Van Dyke

41. “Hope is life’s essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right. So did the Beatles. Without love, nothing has any meaning.”

— Dick Van Dyke

42. “Why is it amazing that I don’t act my age? Why should I act my age? Or more to the point, how is someone my age supposed to act? Old age is part fact, part state of mind, part luck, and wholly something best left for other people to ponder, not you or me. Why waste your time? I don’t.”

— Dick Van Dyke

43. “I didn’t know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community.”

— Dick Van Dyke

44. “Today, if you’re not an alcoholic, you’re nobody.”

— Dick Van Dyke

45. “My brother and I laughed a lot as kids. We came up in the middle of the Depression, and neither one of us knew we were poor. We had nothing, but we didn’t know it.”

— Dick Van Dyke

46. “I think, the ‘Van Dyke Show’ and ‘Mary Poppins’ are two of the best periods of my life. I had so much fun, I didn’t want it to end.”

— Dick Van Dyke

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47. “My son Barry, of course, has been on from the beginning. And his son Shane is playing now a med student regularly on the show. And at one point or another, I’ve had all four of his kids on the show.”

— Dick Van Dyke

48. “There’s a lot of very funny people I’d love to work with that I’ve never met, of course. I love Steve Martin and Jim Carrey.”

— Dick Van Dyke

49. “People think I’m talking like I’m in perfect health, but I have all the infirmities for my age. I have arthritis and all those things. But if you keep moving, that won’t bother you.”

— Dick Van Dyke

50. “I have two kids who were like me, we get out of bed feeling good, and the other two would sit at the breakfast table and grumble. I think it’s born into us. I usually wake up feeling pretty good. Looking forward to the day.”

— Dick Van Dyke