Fred Allen Quotes

An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.

Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.

The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference.

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads to your hips.

An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.

An income tax form is like a laundry list - either way you lose your shirt.

During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.

A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.

The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand.

Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything.

Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.

A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.

My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense.

Condensed milk is wonderful. I don't see how they can get a cow to sit down on those little cans.

I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin.

If the grass is greener in the other fellow's yard- let him worry about cutting it.

I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.

A gentleman is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.

A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better.

Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

Radio is called a medium because it is rare that anything is well done.

Television is the triumph of machine over people.

All I know about humor is that I don't know anything about it.

a group of people who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed.

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.

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.

Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.

A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 AM and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 PM to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.

She used to be a teacher but she has no class now.

The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.

Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.