Top 100 George Burns Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.”

— George Burns

Featured in: Silly Quotes, Quotes About Money, Sarcastic Quotes, Hilarious Quotes, Crazy Quotes

2. “I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.”

— George Burns

Featured in: Silly Quotes, Funny Inspirational Quotes

3. “I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.”

— George Burns

4. “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”

— George Burns

Featured in: Hilarious Quotes, Funny Senior Quotes

5. “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”

— George Burns

6. “I don’t have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down, no problem.”

— George Burns

7. “Be quick to learn and wise to know.”

— George Burns

8. “I find you have to take each day as it comes and be thankful for who’s left and whatever you can still do.”

— George Burns

9. “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”

— George Burns

10. “When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.”

— George Burns

11. “Young. Old. Just words. Inside we feel like our shoe size.”

— George Burns

12. “I don’t worry about getting old. I’m old already. Only young people worry about getting old.”

— George Burns

13. “There’s an old saying, ‘Life begins at forty.’ That’s silly. Life begins every morning you wake up.”

— George Burns

14. “Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, a good cigar and a good woman – or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle.”

— George Burns

Featured in: Humor Quotes

15. “I was brought up to respect my elders, so now I don’t have to respect anybody.”

— George Burns

16. “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

— George Burns

17. “Everything that goes up must come down. But there comes a time when not everything that’s down can come up.”

— George Burns

18. “First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.”

— George Burns

Featured in: Humor Quotes

19. “Fall in love with what you’re going to do for a living. To be able to get out of bed and do what you love to do for the rest of the day is beyond words. I’d rather be a failure in something I love than be successful in something I hate.”

— George Burns

20. “My best advice: Fall in love with what you do for a living.”

— George Burns

21. “If I had taken my doctor’s advice and quit smoking when he advised me to, I wouldn’t have lived to go to his funeral.”

— George Burns

22. “I never go jogging, it makes me spill my martini.”

— George Burns

23. “When you stop giving and offering something to the rest of the world, it’s time to turn out the lights.”

— George Burns

24. “In those days the best painkiller was ice; it wasn’t addictive and it was particularly effective if you poured some whiskey over it.”

— George Burns

25. “If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.”

— George Burns

26. “Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

— George Burns

27. “Love is a lot like a backache. It doesn’t show up on x-rays, but you know it’s there.”

— George Burns

28. “And God said ‘Let there be Satan, so people don’t blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don’t blame everything on Satan.’”

— George Burns

29. “I don’t care what you do for a living. If you love it, you are a success.”

— George Burns

30. “The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.”

— George Burns

31. “You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.”

— George Burns

32. “There will always be a battle between the sexes because men and women want different things. Men want women and women want men.”

— George Burns

33. “As long as you’re working, you stay young.”

— George Burns

34. “Sex after 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope. Even putting my cigar in its holder is a thrill.”

— George Burns

35. “I love to sing, and I love to drink scotch. Most people would rather hear me drink scotch.”

— George Burns

36. “Young. Old. Just Words.”

— George Burns

37. “Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.”

— George Burns

38. “It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.”

— George Burns

39. “From Paris we took the Orient Express to Vienna. I must say I was terribly disappointed; nobody was murdered on the train.”

— George Burns

40. “Nice to be here? At my age it’s nice to be anywhere.”

— George Burns

41. “If you live to be one hundred, you’ve got it made. Very few people die past that age.”

— George Burns

42. “I must be getting absent-minded. Whenever I complain that things aren’t what they used to be, I always forget to include myself.”

— George Burns

43. “Be sure to wear a good cologne, a nice aftershave lotion, and a strong underarm deodorant. And it might be a good idea to wear some clothes, too.”

— George Burns

Featured in: Strong Quotes

44. “It’s no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.”

— George Burns

45. “I spent a year in that town, one Sunday.”

— George Burns

46. “I thought to myself, ‘why not write a bestseller?’ In the first place, more people buy them and more people read them. You make more money and it doesn’t take any more time to write a bestseller than it does to write a book nobody buys.”

— George Burns

47. “I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I’m older than most western countries.”

— George Burns

Featured in: Country Quotes

48. “The heart is a temple wherein all truth resides.”

— George Burns

49. “A young mind in a healthy body is a wonderful thing. Especially for an old man with an open night.”

— George Burns

50. “People are always asking me how much I’m worth. Well, all I can say is, I’ve got enough money to last me the rest of my life. As long as I die in the next 20 minutes.”

— George Burns