Robert Orben Quotes

President Ford used humor a great deal.

It's mandatory in this day and age to be considered to have a sense of humor and to demonstrate it. You're not paying me for a joke, You're paying me for the right joke.

What bothers me about television is that it takes our minds off our minds.

Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards.

I'd be surprised if Ronald Reagan doesn't run again. To us it's a second term. To him it's a double feature.

If somebody accuses you in a story of being a crook, you can demand that they prove it. But if a comic says it and you protest, people say, 'What's the matter, you can't take a joke?'

Humor is a marvelous communications tool, as Reagan has demonstrated so well. He has weathered many a storm that others might not have. With Reagan, people just say, 'There he goes again.' A sense of humor allows a president to back off a little from the tensions of the moment and take a calmer view of things.

If you can get someone to laugh with you, they will be more willing to identify with you, listen to you. It parts the waters.

If you can laugh together, you can work together.

Humor starts like a wildfire, but then continues on, smoldering, smoldering for years.

Noise pollution is a relative thing. In a city it's a jet plane taking off. In a monastery it's a pen that scratches.

The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than 30 percent of the people in the world.

A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that "individuality" is the key to success.

A young person today has a nanosecond attention span, so whatever you do in a humor has to be short. Younger people do not wait for anything that takes time to develop. We're going totally to one-liners. Telling a joke is risk taking. Younger people are more insecure and not willing to put themselves on the line, so a quick one-liner is much safer.

I take my children everywhere, but they always find their way back home.