Fred Allen Quotes - Page 4

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in my goose.

Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.

It was once rumored that fledgling executives walked around their offices backwards so they wouldn't have to face an issue.

I play a musical instrument a little, but only for my own amazement.

To a newspaperman, a human being is an item with skin wrapped around it.

Vaudeville could not vouch for the honesty, the integrity, or the mentality of the individuals who collectively made up the horde the medium embraced. All the human race demands of its members is that they be born. That is all vaudeville demanded. You just had to be born. You could be ignorant and be a star. You could be a moron and be wealthy. The elements that went to make up vaudeville were combed from the jungles, the four corners of the world, the intelligentsia and the subnormal.

The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.

Hush, little bright line, don’t you cry You’ll be a cliché by and by.

The average vice-president is a form of executive fungus that attaches itself to a desk. On a boat this growth would be called a barnacle.

With the advance of refrigeration, I hope that along with the frozen foods someday we will have frozen conversation. A person will be able to keep a frozen promise indefinitely.

Television is a triumph of equipment over people.

Father Time is the make-up man responsible for the physical changes that determine the parts the average actor is to play.

He has no idea what it was like to grow up in the South, where you had to hold your head down.

When Jack Benny plays the violin, it sounds as though the strings are still in the cat.

A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better.

Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.

The S.S. Sierra was a ten-thousand-ton vessel. Today, lifeboats bigger than the Sierra are found on the Queen Mary and other luxury liners.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.