Top 100 Johnny Carson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whiskey, and a dog to eat the rare steak.”

— Johnny Carson

2. “It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, “if you want it your way, cook it yourself.””

— Johnny Carson

3. “Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.”

— Johnny Carson

4. “Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die.”

— Johnny Carson

5. “An oxymoron? What’s that? A moron who studies at Oxford?”

— Johnny Carson

6. “The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”

— Johnny Carson

7. “I have no use for eight houses, 88 cars and 500 suits. I can’t eat but one steak at a time. I don’t want but one woman. It’s silly to have as one’s sole object in life just making money, accumulating wealth.”

— Johnny Carson

8. “Money gives me just one big thing that’s really important, and that’s the freedom of not having to worry about money.”

— Johnny Carson

9. “I see a lot of new faces. Especially on the old faces.”

— Johnny Carson

10. “When turkeys mate they think of swans.”

— Johnny Carson

11. “As long as I don’t commit any crimes, you have no right to judge me except by my performance as a professional. On that level, you’re welcome to think whatever you want about me.”

— Johnny Carson

12. “According to statistics, it’s a lot easier to get hit by lightning than to win a Lotto jackpot. The good side: you don’t hear from your relatives.”

— Johnny Carson

13. “If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself, you’ll have inner peace.”

— Johnny Carson

14. “He’s so fat, he can be his own running mate.”

— Johnny Carson

15. “Audiences have proved time and again that they don’t want a steady diet of any entertainer airing his social views – especially if he’s a comedian.”

— Johnny Carson

16. “I demand my right to a private life, just as I respect that right for everybody else.”

— Johnny Carson

17. “I don’t run with anybody’s herd. I don’t like crowds. I don’t like going to fancy places. I don’t like the whole nightclub scene. Cocktail parties drive me mad. So I do my job and I stay away from the rest of it.”

— Johnny Carson

18. “The difference between divorce and legal separation is that legal separation gives a husband time to hide his money.”

— Johnny Carson

19. “If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners.”

— Johnny Carson

20. “As you all know by now, this is the 51st annual Academy Awards. Two hours of sparkling entertainment spread out over a four-hour show.”

— Johnny Carson

21. “I’m an entertainer, not a commentator. If you’re a comedian your job is to make people laugh.”

— Johnny Carson

22. “I know you’ve been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvelous. It must be very inexpensive.”

— Johnny Carson

23. “Happiness is seeing the muscular lifeguard all the girls were admiring leave the beach hand in hand with another muscular lifeguard.”

— Johnny Carson

24. “When a comic becomes enamored with his own views and foists them off on the public in a polemic way, he loses not only his sense of humor but his value as a humorist.”

— Johnny Carson

25. “Having money gives me the freedom to worry about the things that really matter.”

— Johnny Carson

26. “Air Canada. That’s a good name for a Canadian airline.”

— Johnny Carson

27. “There was this billy goat at a movie studio who found and ate a can of film. When a nanny asked him how he liked it, he said, “It was all right but I liked the book better.””

— Johnny Carson

28. “I work because I enjoy what I’m doing, and the fact that I make money at it – big money – is a fine-and-dandy side fact.”

— Johnny Carson

29. “When the public starts classifying you as thoughtful, someone given to serious issues, you find yourself declassified as a humorist.”

— Johnny Carson

30. “I’ve worked ever since I was a kid with a two-bit kit of magic tricks trying to improve my skills at entertaining whatever public I had – and to make myself ready, whenever the breaks came, to entertain a wider and more demanding public.”

— Johnny Carson

31. “What’s all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?”

— Johnny Carson

32. “Adults ask questions as a child does. When you stop wondering, you might as well put your rocker on the front porch and call it a day.”

— Johnny Carson

33. “I am taking the applause sign home, putting it in the bedroom.”

— Johnny Carson

34. “I owe one thing to my public – the best performance I can give.”

— Johnny Carson

35. “Only lie about the future.”

— Johnny Carson

36. “Last night, it was so cold, the flashers in New York were only describing themselves.”

— Johnny Carson

37. “I don’t think it’s you that changes with success – it’s the people around you who change. Because of your new status, they change in relation to you.”

— Johnny Carson

38. “Happiness is being stuck in an elevator and discovering the ravishing blonde with you is a liquor salesman with a case of samples.”

— Johnny Carson

39. “Democracy is buying a big house you can’t afford with money you don’t have to impress people you wish were dead.”

— Johnny Carson

40. “Pie throwing is kind of a lost art, and although it may be a rather rudimentary, burlesque humor, there’s something inherently funny about taking a pie in the face, under the right conditions.”

— Johnny Carson

41. “There’s a big difference between being a loner and being lonely. I’m far from lonely. My day is full of things I enjoy, starting with my show. Any time my work is going well and I have a relationship with a woman that’s pretty solid, that does it for me.”

— Johnny Carson

42. “A two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry-that’s Thanksgiving dinner at Three Mile Island.”

— Johnny Carson

Featured in: Fun Quotes

43. “The best way to thaw a frozen turkey? Blow in it’s ear.”

— Johnny Carson

44. “NBC’s a little jealous of CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer. They want to get a reporter with a macho-sounding name too, so they’re changing Irving R. Levine’s name to Scud Shrapnel.”

— Johnny Carson

45. “Egyptian President Sadat had a belly dancer entertain President Nixon at a state dinner. Mr. Nixon was really impressed. He hadn’t seen contortions like that since Rose Mary Woods.”

— Johnny Carson

46. “If God didn’t want man to hunt, He wouldn’t have given us plaid shirts.”

— Johnny Carson

47. “Whatever you do, you’re going to be criticized.”

— Johnny Carson

48. “Happiness is a tiger in your tank and a pussycat in your back seat.”

— Johnny Carson

49. “Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.”

— Johnny Carson

50. “I heard from my cat’s lawyer today; my cat wants $12,000 a week for Tender Vittles.”

— Johnny Carson