Latest Johnny Carson Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

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

  Johnny Carson

  Demand, Private Life

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• 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

  Kids, Skills, Two

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• Entertainment is like any other major industry; it's cold, big business. The business end wants to know one thing: Can you do the job? If you can, you're in, you're made; if you can't, you're out.

  Johnny Carson

  Jobs, Want, Entertainment

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• You become successful, the way I see it, only if you're good enough to deliver what the public enjoys. If you're not, you won't have any audience; so the performer really has more to do with his success than the public does.

  Johnny Carson

  Successful, Doe, Way

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• There's only one critic whose opinion I really value, in the final analysis: Johnny Carson. I have never needed any entourage standing around bolstering my ego. I'm secure. I know exactly who and what I am. I don't need to be told. I make no apologies for being the way I am.

  Johnny Carson

  Apology, Ego, Finals

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• I play my life straight - the way I see it. I'm grateful to audiences for watching me and for enjoying what I do - but I'm not one of those who believe that a successful entertainer is made by the public, as is so often said.

  Johnny Carson

  Believe, Grateful, Successful

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• I'm an entertainer; I try to give the public what it wants while I'm on the screen, and I'm completely sincere about it. If I don't happen to be a laughing boy off the screen, that doesn't make me a hypocrite or a phony.

  Johnny Carson

  Hypocrite, Boys, Giving

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• 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

  Thinking, Long, Judging

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• I get sick of that old rationalization, "We're staying together because of the children." Kids couldn't be more miserable living with parents who can't stand each other. They're far better off if there's an honest, clean divorce.

  Johnny Carson

  Children, Kids, Divorce

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• I wouldn't have the slightest interest in running for public office. I'd rather make jokes about politicians than become one of them.

  Johnny Carson

  Running, Office, Politician

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• I think it's almost immoral to keep on with a marriage that's really bad. It just gets more and more rotten and vindictive and everybody gets more and more hurt. There's not enough honesty about marriage, I think. I wish more people would face the truth about their marital situations.

  Johnny Carson

  Hurt, Honesty, Thinking

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• I think students ought to have the right to protest, but not to the point of anarchy.

  Johnny Carson

  Thinking, Anarchy, Students

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• The vast majority of us don't want to face the fact that we're in the middle of a sweeping social revolution. In sex. In spiritual values. In opposition to wars no one wants. In opposition to government big-brotherhood. In civil rights. In basic human goals. They're all facets of a general upheaval.

  Johnny Carson

  Spiritual, Sex, War

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• It's the lack of this kind of open and honest education about sex that causes so many kids to grow up with sexual hang-ups.

  Johnny Carson

  Sex, Growing Up, Kids

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• Like their parents, kids flock to see James Bond and Derek Flint movies - outrageously antiheroic heroes who break all the taboos, making attractive the very things the kids are told they shouldn't do themselves.

  Johnny Carson

  Hero, Kids, Parent

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• There's a lot of hypocrisy in audiences. I'd never dream of telling even on a nightclub stage, let alone my show, some of the jokes that are told in a lot of the living rooms from which we get those letters!

  Johnny Carson

  Dream, Hypocrisy, Letters

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• Talking about sexual morality, I wouldn't agree that it's declining, but it's certainly changing. Young and old, we are very much in the process of taking a fresh look at the whole issue of morality. The only decline that's taking place - and it's about time - is in the old puritanical concept that sex is equated with sin.

  Johnny Carson

  Sex, Talking, Issues

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

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

  Johnny Carson

  Thoughtful, Issues, Finding Yourself

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• Americans, too many of them, take themselves too seriously. You're going to get rapped - by the viewers, by the sponsors and by the network brass - if you joke about doctors, lawyers, dentists, scientists, bus drivers, I don't care who. You can't make a joke about Catholics, Negroes, Jews, Italians, politicians, dogs or cats. In fact, politicians, dogs and cats are the most sacred institutions in America.

  Johnny Carson

  Dog, Cat, Doctors

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• 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

  Views, Way, Sense Of Humor

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• Who cares what entertainers on the air think about international affairs? Who would want to hear me about Vietnam? They can hear all they want from people with reason to be respected as knowledgeable.

  Johnny Carson

  Thinking, Air, People

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• 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

  Views, Comedian, Want

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• I'm not one of those who spring up yelling, "Yippee! Another day!" I'll grumble and sulk around a couple of hours, reading newspapers and trying to pick out an idea I might do something with on the show. But I don't really start functioning until noon or later; then about two I go to the studio and the pace begins to quicken.

  Johnny Carson

  Couple, Spring, Reading

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

• Having money gives me the freedom to worry about the things that really matter.

  Johnny Carson

  Giving, Worry, Matter

• 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

  Facts, Sides, Making Money

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.