Top 80 Don Rickles Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You throw your best punch, otherwise don’t do it.”

— Don Rickles

2. “Italians are fantastic people, really. They can work you over in an alley while singing an opera.”

— Don Rickles

3. “I take pride in being very unique in what I do. Nobody else can do what I do and I don’t mean to say that egotistically, it’s just something in my personality.”

— Don Rickles

4. “Whatever you do to gain success, you have to hang in there and hope good things happen. Always think positive.”

— Don Rickles

5. “When you stand alone and sell yourself, you can’t please everyone. But when you’re different, you can last.”

— Don Rickles

6. “It’s very sweet to have people say nice things about you, and I always accept that.”

— Don Rickles

7. “They always use the word ‘insult’ with me, but I don’t hurt anybody. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I did. I make fun of everybody and exaggerate all our insecurities.”

— Don Rickles

8. “I’ve got an accountant who’s been with me forty years. If he makes a mistake, he dies.”

— Don Rickles

9. “Struggling is hard because you never know what’s at the end of the tunnel.”

— Don Rickles

10. “Showbiz is great if you’re successful.”

— Don Rickles

11. “You know what’s funny to me? Attitude.”

— Don Rickles

12. “Room service is great if you want to pay $500 for a club sandwich.”

— Don Rickles

13. “If I were to insult people and mean it, that wouldn’t be funny.”

— Don Rickles

14. “I used to play golf. I wanted to be a better player, but after a while I realized I’d always stink. And that’s when I really started to enjoy the game.”

— Don Rickles

15. “Show business is my life. When I was a kid I sold insurance, but nobody laughed.”

— Don Rickles

16. “I don’t do impressions.”

— Don Rickles

17. “My whole act is off the top of my head.”

— Don Rickles

18. “I think if I took therapy, the doctor would quit. He’d just pick up the couch and walk out of the room.”

— Don Rickles

19. “Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.”

— Don Rickles

20. “I’ve never walked off stage and said, I shouldn’t have done that. Because when you do what I do, you’re like a fighter. You throw the right hand and say, That’s what got me to this dance. You can’t have doubt. If you have doubt, there’s no show.”

— Don Rickles

21. “You’ve got to be able to sell yourself.”

— Don Rickles

22. “People think being in your seventies means sitting around in a chair with a blanket over your legs, drooling.”

— Don Rickles

23. “Some people say funny things, but I say things funny.”

— Don Rickles

24. “I grew up in an Orthodox family, as I grew older, I became Conservative and that’s how it ended up. But I’ve developed that Jewish feel to my act from my surroundings and my family.”

— Don Rickles

25. “I’m very shy so I became very outgoing to protect my shyness.”

— Don Rickles

26. “Women were afraid of me, they were scared to death. But I always say be yourself, if you’re funny then let your sense of humor go there. I mean there’s no sense hiding what you feel.”

— Don Rickles

27. “Alan King, a comedian I adored, was considered society, and I was considered the Jewish kid from the neighborhood.”

— Don Rickles

28. “You can’t study comedy; it’s within you. It’s a personality. My humor is an attitude.”

— Don Rickles

29. “It takes many years to be a great comedian.”

— Don Rickles

30. “Eddie Fisher married to Elizabeth Taylor is like me trying to wash the Empire State Building with a bar of soap.”

— Don Rickles

31. “Every night when I go out on stage, there’s always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I’m always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I’m not going to offend!”

— Don Rickles

32. “I don’t feel an obligation to give everyone a hard time, but when they’re important people, it’s fun.”

— Don Rickles

33. “I’ve never been mean-spirited, in my opinion. I never did anything below the belt.”

— Don Rickles

34. “I would describe myself as a guy that’s very normal but has the tendency to rib people, but never in a mean-spirited way.”

— Don Rickles

35. “Political correctness? In my humor, I never talk about politics. I was never much into all that.”

— Don Rickles

36. “When I first went to Vegas, there were just high-rollers and gamblers and the wise guys treated you great.”

— Don Rickles

37. “I cannot tell a joke. But I can do a situation, that it becomes a joke.”

— Don Rickles

38. “I don’t care if the average guy on the street really knows what I’m like, as long as he knows I’m not really a mean, vicious guy. My friends and family know what I’m really like. That’s what’s important.”

— Don Rickles

39. “An insult comic is the title I was given. What I do is exaggeration. I make fun of people, at life, of myself and my surroundings.”

— Don Rickles

40. “Some people call me a legend and the last of the greats, and I appreciate it.”

— Don Rickles

41. “I always rib people, but nobody ever gives me a hard time. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re afraid of what I might say. There’s probably a lesson in that somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.”

— Don Rickles

42. “I was a mother’s boy.”

— Don Rickles

43. “When you enter a room, you have to kiss his ring. I don’t mind, but he has it in his back pocket.”

— Don Rickles

44. “Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I’m not a black.”

— Don Rickles

45. “I have no idea what I’m going to say when I stand up to give a toast. But I do know that anything I say I find funny.”

— Don Rickles

46. “To my knowledge, I was the first guy really to do what I do. And then later on different comedians started trying doing it.”

— Don Rickles

47. “Who picks your clothes – Stevie Wonder?”

— Don Rickles

48. “It’s tough having the last name Rickles. Luckily, my kids handled it great.”

— Don Rickles

49. “The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.”

— Don Rickles

50. “When I’m onstage, I’m acting.”

— Don Rickles