Don Rickles Quotes

It's tough having the last name Rickles. Luckily, my kids handled it great.

Even when I was in high school and the Navy, I was the guy who could rip somebody, and they'd laugh at it.

My father was an insurance man and a small-time gambler. He was a good man, but he had an eye for the racehorses, and I saw how it used to bother my mother. I've never gambled a dime. Never, in all those years in Vegas.

My mother was a Jewish General Patton.

If I were to insult people and mean it, that wouldn't be funny.

I was always the guy - out of insecurities, I was always making fun, even as a kid.

When you do see me, you'll get the idea from when you see me that it's all off the top of my head. A lot of it is a beginning, middle and the end. But it's different every night. I have a lot of jokes in my back pocket I've said over the years.

I've never been able to tell jokes. In the beginning of my career I did impressions and jokes like any other comedian, but I was never very successful because I did it poorly. So I started to talk to the audience and started talking about the atmosphere around me and started to become angry, not in a mean-spirited way, but in a fun way - and my attitude developed from there.

It's very sweet to have people say nice things about you, and I always accept that.

If something strikes me as funny, I'll put it in my performance.

The young comedians always ask me, 'What's the secret for staying around?' I tell them, 'There is no secret - just stay around. Longevity is the most important thing.'

When I walk down the street in New York, I swear to God, the building constructor, the guy pounding cement and what not, will yell, 'Hey, you hockey puck!'

Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I'm not a black.

I stopped smoking. But my personality I still have. I get up in the morning, and not everybody loves me, so if you want to call that a bad habit, there's that.

In our day we went from - we went into saloons. We couldn't cross over like you can today, get a television series and all of a sudden you're a major movie star, you know.

I call myself an actor. I always wanted to be one.

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

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

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

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.

After I graduated, I tried Broadway, which was difficult for me. It was tough to get a part on Broadway, so I just started talking to audiences at different social gatherings, and little by little I became Don Rickles - whatever that is.

The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.

Struggling is hard because you never know what's at the end of the tunnel.

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.

I was in World War II; I cried when they took me in the Navy. That's the last time I cried.

My whole act is off the top of my head.

You can't study comedy; it's within you. It's a personality. My humor is an attitude.

I've never gambled a dime. Never, in all my years in Vegas.

Sinatra had a lot of mood swings, but he was wonderful to my wife Barbara and to me. He made no bones about who he liked and who he loved, and he had this great charisma. When he walked into a room, it stopped. I've only seen that happen with Ronald Reagan.

I have my own gym. When you do jokes and they sell, you get a gym.

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

I've never had guys sit me down and say this is what you've got to do. It's my personality that makes me one of a kind, and I believe that.

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.

I have to have energy because I have a lot of expenses. A couple of cars, couple of dogs and a big estate.

Everything I've ever done in my whole career, people might not know, I've never written anything down on paper.

Sinatra was somebody special.

I'm always watching films. The Academy pretty much sends me every film that's ever been done. I enjoy watching them, especially with the people I know.

Famous people are deceptive. Deep down, they're just regular people. Like Larry King. We've been friends for forty years. He's one of the few guys I know who's really famous. One minute he's talking to the president on his cell phone, and then the next minute he's saying to me, 'Do you think we ought to give the waiter another dollar?'

I was 28 when my father died, and I was an only child.

I'm not a big one for jokes. I can't tell a joke, believe it or not. If you gave me a thousand bucks and said, 'Don, get up at a party and tell a joke', I'm the worst.

I don't walk into a dinner party and say, 'You're an idiot; give me my coat.'

Who picks your clothes - Stevie Wonder?

I want to be a dog, but I'm a pussycat.

Johnny Carson was a big influence on me - all of those shows I did with him over the years, like, 100 of them, they made a bit of a name for me at the time, so that part of my life was very good.

Compared to what some of the young comics use for material today, I'm a priest.

I didn't get married until I was 38.

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

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

I write my own tweets.

I never went out looking for glory.

I was nice to the people in the Philippines for the two and a half years I was there, because I knew eventually I'd have to kiss up to them so my grandchildren could have toys.

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

You lose your energy, you lose that excitement and it gets the audience up.

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

To this day, when I say that I went to the American Academy, people are very impressed. The reputation of the school has always been fantastic.

I couldn't sell air conditioners on a 98-degree day. When I demonstrated them in a showroom, I pushed the wrong button and blew the circuit.

I never could tell a joke. I just started talking to the audience, and when the drunks would yell, "Hey, when do the broads come on?" I got good at saying, "Relax. Clear your skin up first." They called me "the insult guy," but it's never mean-spirited. I'm just exaggerating everything about us and about life.

I've never gone to comedy clubs.

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.

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

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.

I always enjoy being full of fun, but I have my serious moments. Some women go for the studious kind of guy, I certainly was not that. If a girl is looking for somebody different and maybe a little more exciting for themselves - someone more on the fun side, I would suggest that they look for a type like Don Rickles.

I was a mother's boy.

When you're 18, you're just so busy being scared and having fun - a crazy mixture - that you never thought of dying.

I was sitting in the toilet and I was by myself. I was tired of playing with the roller, so I said I'd better write a book.

Now when I'm not working, I don't really hang out with the young comics.

I enjoy mixed audiences, not one particular group. Short, tall, scientists, Jews, gentiles, whatever, as long as they breathe and like to laugh.

I still have drive, but everything is relative.

I always say, when you're onstage you can't please everybody. I'm sure there are people who may not take to what I do, but that's okay. Thank God the majority are in my corner.

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.

Showbiz is great if you're successful.

I've been hot, I've been lukewarm, I've been freezing, but I've always been a headliner.

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

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!

I always say that comedians and actors were all kind of shy when they were young. I was very, believe it or not, kind of embarrassed as a child. But my mother was a very strong lady and she was the one that kept it going when I thought it would be over for me as a performer. She was always my inspiration and she was a big influence on me.

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

Sex is great, but when you get to be my age, you've got to pace it a little bit. Otherwise you get tired.

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

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.

It takes many years to be a great comedian.