Quotes from Jonathan Winters

Something I'll always remember - when I was a kid, I shook hands with Orville Wright. Forty years later, I shook hands with Neil Armstrong. The guy that invented the airplane and the guy that walked on the moon. In a lifetime, that's kinda wild when you think about it.

I love improvisation. You can't blame it on the writers. You can't blame it on direction. You can't blame it on the camera guy... It's you. You're on. You've got to do it, and you either sink or swim with what you've got.

Discipline is tough for a guy who is a rebel.

I find painting a much slower process than comedy, where you can go a mile a minute verbally and hope to God that some of the people out there understand you. I don't paint every day. I'm not that motivated.

My mother and father were very strange people. They tried to be funny which is always very sad to me.

Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.

Well, the most terrible fear that anybody should have is not war, is not a disease, not cancer or heart problems or food poisoning - it's a man or a woman without a sense of humor.

As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things. I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.

The most terrible fear that anybody should have is not war, is not a disease, not cancer or heart problems or food poisoning - it's a man or a woman without a sense of humor.

I have never pretended to be any kind of super-religious kind of man, but I feel very strongly that you can be funny without being dirty.

I started out as an artist, and what I do is verbal paintings. I paint a picture. Hopefully, you'll see the characters and what they're doing and what they're saying.

I know you can be funny without being filthy.

I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it.