Quotes from Bob Newhart

If you look at Jack Benny, George Burns, or Don Rickles, they've all had long, successful marriages. So, I think there's something about laughter and the durability of a marriage.

All comedians are, in a way, anarchists. Our job is to make fun of the existing world.

Dick Martin, if you put a gun to his forehead, he couldn't tell you a joke.

If 'The New York Times' says it, it must be true.

The acting is better when you know your material is being judged.

There was a sea of change in comedy in the late 1950s and '60s. We were dealing with vignettes as opposed to jokes. We were more socially aware.

I was an accountant in Chicago, and a friend of mine, Ed Gallagher, was in advertising. At 4:30 every day I'd be bored, and I would call him. He'd interview me.

The best advice I was probably given and the best advice I could give someone who is trying to get into the comedy field is to take advantage of every opportunity you have to work to hone your skills.

I don't want to sound like the old guy, but cynicism is a potential danger. It colors our way of looking at the world.

No matter what hyenas sound like, they are not actually laughing.

I found the most difficult thing when you became successful - when I had the record album, it won Album of the Year - that you were cut off from the source of your material. Your material was everyday people, and you were kind of cut off from that, and you had to work at it.

'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' was the best television, the best cast, the best-written television show ever.

I don't know how doctors pick one specialty over another. Some you can understand. Pediatricians. Or gynecologists delivering babies, bringing a new life into the world, but how does someone want to be a proctologist? How can you fall in love with proctology?

A lot of money is spent trying to keep people alive who don't necessarily want to be alive.

Probably the best advice I ever got in my life was from the head of the accounting department, Mr. Hutchinson, I believe at the Glidden Company in Chicago, and he told me, 'You really aren't cut out for accounting.'

I don't have a stack of scripts.

People are meant to be certain places, and I think I'm meant to be on a sound stage doing situation comedy.

I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant.

This stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to screw with it now.

I have no intention of retiring; I can't imagine not doing stand-up. That's where I started and where I'll be.

Sometimes you forget you're famous. You wonder, 'Why is that person staring at me?'

I would say I came from upper middle class family.

Richard Pryor introduced me to the world of the inner city, and the urban world, and did it hysterically. My favorite comedian, even though we work 180 degrees differently, but funny is funny is funny.

Continuing to do stand-up is always a challenge because the audiences and the environments in which you work very often differ.