"Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything."
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Quote collection
Fred Allen quotes (page 3 of 5)
94 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A human being is nothing but a story with skin around it."
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"If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race."
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"After quitting radio I was able to live on the money I saved on aspirins."
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"Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all."
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"The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi."
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"Television is a medium because anything well done is rare."
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"English coffee tastes like water that has been squeezed out of a wet sleeve."
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"My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense."
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"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."
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"Radio is called a medium because it is rare that anything is well done."
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"All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter."
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"He's so small, he's a waste of skin."
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"Success is like dealing with your kid or teaching your wife to drive. Sooner or later you'll end up in the police station."
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"Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you."
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"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
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"The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed."
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"He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both eyes."
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"There are two kinds of jokes - funny jokes and Jack Benny jokes."
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"Television is the triumph of machine over people."
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