Jeff Dunham Quotes

If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?

When a bad experience happens, you just chalk it up to the great fact that you just got five more jokes in the show.

As humans we like to laugh at our fears, we like to whistle in the dark.

I was a kid in the third grade ... saw a dummy in the toy store. In the '60s and '70s there were a lot of those vinyl ventriloquism dummies - just about every toy store had one. Everyone close to my age that I've talked to, especially guys for some reason, tell me that they had one too, but they said they never could do it. So many people come up to me and say that. It was just something that I thought was cool. I started doing book reports with it - I developed the skill. I easily got A's on all my reports. It was just something that a little kid grasped on to - so I stuck with it.

I hate the beach - I'm a mountain guy. I'd much rather face a bear than a shark.

You never know how long your fifteen minutes of fame is going to last.

I've skewered whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks, addicts, the elderly, and my wife. As a standup comic, it is my job to make the majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of free speech.

My mother and my father have always supported me. Now in their eighties, they actually clamor onto the tour bus with me once or twice a year so they can watch the performances and hear the crowds. Traveling with eighty-something-year-olds on a tour bus... there has to be some sort of reality show in that.

Up until college age I was using the typical little-boy dummy that sits on the knee and makes woodpecker jokes. My first original character didn't happen until later, and that was Jose the Jalapeno on a Stick.

A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things.

When I was eight years old, I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror, practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going; there was no reason to quit.

But the mechanics of learning to 'throw your voice' are pretty simple. Anyone with a tongue, an upper palate, teeth, and a normal speaking voice can learn ventriloquism.

I've tried the female thing. I was in a movie called Dinner for Schmucks a couple of years ago with Steve Carell and I created a female character for that movie. And after a few months of trying her out on the road it just didn't work. I mean, I can think like a terrorist, I can think like a white trash guy, I can even try and think like an African American, but I can't figure out how a woman.

The best place to find material is in real life. I've always maintained that it's not until the mid-20s that you have enough of a life to draw from. There's nothing better for a comic than to go through some bad stuff - and some good stuff, like getting married.

I try to make the majority of my audience laugh. That's my audience. They'll laugh at the dead terrorist.

There's no real formula for doing it, it's either just living life and writing down a joke you think of in the middle of the day and then pieces those together later.

The roadwork is just rehearsal for that DVD you're going to film a year later.

Everybody has their favorite character.That's the only way I pick, whatever is going on in society, whatever I think folks will laugh at that's what I come up with.

The only way a ventriloquist speaks differently is that he forgoes using his or her lips, and learns to reproduce sounds using the tongue, upper palate, and teeth only. Those 'difficult' letters are B, F, M, P, V, W, and Y.

I've always said that instead of watching a guy juggle seven things amazingly I would rather see a really bad juggler who's really funny.

Growing up doing those Kiwanis Clubs, doing those Cub Scout banquets, doing those church shows, I learned to find that sensibility that most people could laugh at - that all ages and demographics could laugh at.

I started in a business background, but then it was like, 'you know, I can't do math,' so I changed it to a liberal arts degree and got my Bachelor of Arts in Communications and it made sense.

Even going to college, getting my degree in Radio TV and Film, as I was approaching the time when you have to decide on a major, I kept trying to figure out what would be the best major to enhance what I am doing as a performer.

We just got a tour bus. I didn't know tour buses could be this nice. It's just me, Brian Haner the guitar guy, the tour manager and a writer. We laugh ourselves silly. Apparently we're going to have a road dog, a miniature pincher. It's the smallest they've ever seen. How masculine am I going to look, working with dolls and a miniature dog?

I've got an answer to where Osama bin Laden is and I know, he's dead and living in my suitcase with my dummies.'