Groucho Marx

"George Kaufman and I wrote a lot of funny lines for Groucho, some of which he occasionally used... but it was Groucho who by his innate sense of timing and his inimitable delivery, added the ingredient that brought the house down."

"A likely story — and probably true."

"Although it is generally known, I think it's about time to announce that I was born at a very early age."

"I sent the club a wire stating, "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER"."

"[Variant:] "Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member"."

"No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend."

"Here's to our wives and girlfriends... may they never meet! (Variation on an old Royal Navy wardroom toast: "Wives and Sweethearts! May they never meet!")"

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it."

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception."

"They say Allen got something from the Marx Brothers. He got nothing. Maybe twenty years ago, he might have been inspired. Today he's an original. The best, the funniest."

"I got $25 from Reader's Digest last week for something I never said. I get credit all the time for things I never said. You know that line in You Bet Your Life? The guy says he has seventeen kids and I say: "I smoke a cigar, but I take it out of my mouth occasionally"? I never said that."

"I like pancakes, but I haven't got a closet full of them!"

"I did a bond tour during the Second World War... We were raising money, and we played Boston and Philadelphia and most of the big cities. And we got to Minneapolis. There wasn't any big theater to play there, so we did our show in a railroad station. Then I told the audience that I knew a girl in Minneapolis. She was also known in St.Paul, she used to come over to visit me. She was known as "The Tail Of Two Cities." I didn't sell any more bonds, but eh... they didn't allow me to appear anymore."

"My experience is that people are most likely to listen to reason when in bed."

"Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication."

"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book."

"To write an autobiography of Groucho Marx would be as asinine as to read an autobiography of Groucho Marx."

"Die, my dear? Why that's the last thing I'll do!"

"I don't have a photograph. I'd give you my footprints, but they're upstairs in my socks."

"I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."

"Some years back, after a childhood of preoccupation with comedy that led me to observing the styles of all the great comedians, I came to the conclusion that Groucho Marx was the best comedian this country ever produced. Now I am more convinced than ever that I was right. I can't think of a comedian who combined a totally original physical conception that was hilarious with a matchless verbal delivery. I believe there is a natural inborn greatness in Groucho that defies close analysis as it does with any genuine artist. He is simply unique in the same way that Picasso or Stravinsky are, and I believe his outrageous unsentimental disregard for order will be equally as funny a thousand years from now. In addition to all this, he makes me laugh."

"I admit it's not original, Mr. Marx. It's a line you used in Horse Feathers, which I assumed you ad-libbed. You didn't get a laugh with it either."

"Groucho appeals on so many levels at once that you could go nuts trying to figure out whether it's the funny movement, the incomparable tone of voice, what he is saying, or that keenly witty face that hits you the hardest. I swear that if he never existed, we would sense a lack in the world of comedy, like that planet in the solar system that astronomers say Ought to be there. For me he is The Master."

"Groucho Marx is the only actor I ever allowed to ad-lib in a show I wrote. That was because I couldn't stop him."

"Ich mag keinem Club angehören, der mich als Mitglied aufnimmt."