Top 80 Rosie O'Donnell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I think what children need is love, security, stability, consistency, and kindness.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

2. “I act irrationally, I defy the odds, I engage when others would run. I look for trouble, I seek chaos, it is a burden.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

3. “Are you fat because you’re a lesbian, or are you a lesbian because you’re fat?”

— Rosie O'Donnell

4. “I know the best moments can never be captured on film, even as I spend nearly half my life trying to do just that.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

5. “You know what happens to people who lie. They get sick and they get cancer. If they keep lying, they get it again.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

6. “I went to seven colleges. I was a professional transfer student. I had to drop out ’cause I couldn’t see out the back window.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

7. “The gray has gone away. I am living in bright Technicolor.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

8. “I’d rather sink with my own vision than float with somebody else’s.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

9. “I think life is easier if you’re straight.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

10. “My life goal is not to ruin anyone’s existence. I’m a comic.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

11. “I love to be able to support other women comics.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

12. “I don’t care if you want to hunt, I don’t care if you think it’s your right. I say, sorry, you are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun I think you should go to prison.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

13. “When someone comments on my weight, I have to work hard to stand in front of the mirror and say, “This is who you are. You’re okay in this lady, and you’re a great, healthy, lovable and loving person.” I try to accept myself.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

14. “Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

15. “We really did. We got married.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

16. “I’ve been on every diet in the world. I’ve been on Slim-Fast. For breakfast you have a shake. For lunch, you have a shake. For dinner, you kill anyone with food on their plate.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

17. “Public school teachers in Long Island, New York, saved my life in the ’70s. They were involved and invested and helpful. One took me into her family and loved me back to life. She taught me that love is not formed and families are not formed by blood. That love makes a family.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

18. “I just want to say something. 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?”

— Rosie O'Donnell

19. “Mass adulation from the multitudes does not penetrate your soul or your core.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

20. “Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

21. “I believe that God has a plan, and it’s your job to show up with an open heart.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

22. “It takes a lot to become a foster parent.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

23. “I think that once you open the door and allow people in on a certain aspect, it’s very hard to then control how far that ripple effect is. So I think that the person who is known or famous has the ability to decide what they do or don’t want to share.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

24. “I’m sure I will cause tremendous seismic shifts in the culture again.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

25. “You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world, or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

26. “I think Oprah who is the height of aspiration and inspiration recognizes something in me that is germane.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

27. “I think that the reason for my success is that I am really not aspirational. I am inspirational in that the people at home feel like they can really relate to me.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

28. “I think the actions of the president are, in my opinion, the most vile and hateful words ever spoken by a sitting president. I am stunned and I’m horrified.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

29. “I wish that there were more stringent laws to make guns sold anywhere that they’re legal harder to get.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

30. “I know, people were like, “It’s all right that she’s gay, but she doesn’t have to look so gay.” Trust me – I’m never cutting my hair again!”

— Rosie O'Donnell

31. “I’m going to try really hard not to be bossy, but I’ve only done stand-up comedy and then my own show where you’re the total boss of everything!”

— Rosie O'Donnell

32. “Maybe compassion is compulsion, creativity is insanity. If this is so, then is craziness a good thing, the source of our humanity?”

— Rosie O'Donnell

33. “We need to make sure that the powers that be know that arts education is as vital and as important as geography and arithmetic. You know, it is a part of the spiritual and the soulful experience and expression of being human and it is a necessity, as necessary as water, as breathing air.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

34. “I’d love to be a dead body in the emergency room and have George Clooney go, ‘This one’s gone!’ while he puts a sheet on me.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

35. “The words of musicals were the moral codes that I lived by. I found meaning and messages in musicals that I didn’t find in churches or school books and it really made me come alive in a way.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

36. “The equality that we are all entitled to, as citizens of this democracy, can’t be avoided by some religious dogma of a President who’s is supposed to believe in the notion of separation of church and state. And he frankly doesn’t.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

37. “Without art there is no hope.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

38. “I do believe it is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

39. “I’m not asking that people accept homosexuality. I’m not asking that they believe like I do that it’s inborn. I’m not asking that. All I’m saying is don’t let these children suffer without a family because of your bias.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

40. “I don’t think America knows what a gay parent looks like. I am the gay parent. America has watched me parent my children on TV for six years. They know what kind of parent I am.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

41. “I’m not going to let my life revolve around losing weight. I have other things to do.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

42. “I’d always admired writers. I’d always loved words on a page. Somehow, words seemed to bypass image and get straight to the heart of things. Somehow, words seemed big enough to contain pain, and sentences could pull broken bits together.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

43. “President Bush almost killed me.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

44. “There are some heterosexuals that have heterosexual behavior that is appalling sexually, that is deviant and bad and not really moral and Christ-like and biblical. But those people are never questioned as to whether or not they’re allowed to be a parent.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

45. “Somebody’s values and their morals are shown best in the way they treat others and their children, and the world in general. It’s not necessarily the way that they respond sexually and emotionally to the person they choose to live with.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

46. “My job is mostly to entertain and be funny.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

47. “I know I’m a really good mother. I know it. I’m a really good mother.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

48. “I think Democracy is threatened in a way it hasn’t been in two hundred years, and if America doesn’t stand up, we’re in big trouble.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

49. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know if I can do radio.’ I never even listen to it.”

— Rosie O'Donnell

50. “I couldn’t imagine doing a show where I’d once again have to answer to corporate interests.”

— Rosie O'Donnell