Jokes

There's a new birth control pill for women. You put it between your knees and keep it there.
~ Bill Barner

What can I do to avoid falling hair?
Step to one side.
~ Captain Billy's Whiz Bang (November 1927), in Studies in American Humor. Volume III (January 1977); William Cole From Scatology to Social History: Captain Billy's Whiz Bang

I think the reason my parents didn't like me is I was not a good-looking kid. My whole family was embarrassed, they didn't want me to be seen. ... They enrolled me in a school for the blind.
~ Billy Braver

When you tell an Iowan a joke, you can see a kind of race going on between his brain and his expression.
~ Bill Bryson

Mookie, what you do say you hit me some grounders?
~ William Joseph "Bill" Buckner (kidding Mookie Wilson before a Red Sox vs. Mets in a charity game on May 7, 1987), quoted in The Associated Press (26 July 2002). Buckner returns to Shea

Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.
~ "Johnny" William Carson

He's so fat, he can be his own running mate.
~ "Johnny" William Carson

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.
~ "Johnny" William Carson

If God didn't want man to hunt, he wouldn't have given us plaid shirts.
~ "Johnny" William Carson, NBC TV. The Tonight Show

If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.
~ "Johnny" William Carson

Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.
~ "Johnny" William Carson

Jimmy Carter needs Billy like Van Gogh needs stereo.
~ "Johnny" William Carson, NBC TV (1977). The Tonight Show

The closest thing to Roseanne Barr's singing the national anthem was my cat being neutered.
~ "Johnny" William Carson

We're more effective than birth control pills.
~ "Johnny" William Carson, NBC TV. The Tonight Show

I wasn't always black. ... There was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.
~ Bill Cosby

Is the glass half full, or half empty?
It depends on whether you're pouring, or drinking.
~ Bill Cosby, in Stewart Brand The Clock of the Long Now

I can't be funny if my feet don't feel right.
~ Billy Crystal

People thought this would be an award show -- but we couldn't get anybody to open up the envelopes. I've been backstage at a lot of rock concerts, and I've never seen musicians run away from white powder before!
~ Billy Crystal, at Madison Square Garden (20 October 2001). Concert for the City of New York

This guy was so large, he had his own climate.
~ Billy Crystal

He is so old that his blood type was discontinued.
~ Bill Dana (William Szathmary)

Assault weapons can be used as legitimate hunting rifles says the NRA. You know what, I can buy that argument. I mean, you can also use a chainsaw to cut butter. Just going to get a little messy around muffin time is all I'm saying.
~ Will Durst, in The Progressive magazine (August 2003). Crack kills, pot giggles - Off the Map - comparison between crack cocaine and marijuana

If God has cable, we are the 24-hour doofus network.
~ Will Durst

Men are superior to women. For one thing, men can urinate from a speeding car.
~ Will Durst

Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler.
~ W.C. Fields, Attributed

All the men in my family were bearded, and most of the women.
~ W.C. Fields

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Then give up, no use being a damned fool about it.
~ W.C. Fields

Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
~ William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819). On Wit and Humor

What did moths bump into before the electric light bulb was invented? Boy, the lightbulb really screwed the moth up, didn't it? Are there moths on their way to the sun now going, "It's gonna be worth it!"
~ Bill Hicks

You cannot be at perfect ease with a friend who does not joke.
~ William Dean Howells, My Literary Passions (1895). Chapter XXXIV: Valdes, Galdos, Verga, Zola, Trollope, Hardy

Remember how I found you there alone in your electric chair, I told you dirty jokes until you smiled.
~ Billy Joel

A lot of people have warned President Clinton that Bosnia will turn into another Vietnam, which would be embarrassing for him because he'll have to go back to college.
~ Bill Maher, ABC TV (1993). Politically Incorrect

A new biography of Madonna came out last week, and apparently the biography lists all the men she's slept with. The book is apparently called the Manhattan Telephone Directory.
~ Bill Maher

Every New Yorker knows the indignity of waiting at a red light, trying to avoid some guy with a sponge and a bucket, and then getting squeegeed against your will. Of course, it's not quite so bad if you're in a car ...
~ Bill Maher, ABC TV (1994). Politically Incorrect

Hi, I'm Bill. I'm a birth survivor.
~ Bill Maher

If Bill Clinton was Moses, he would have come down with the Ten Suggestions.
~ Bill Maher, ABC TV (1993). Politically Incorrect

In Lowell, Indiana, there was a four-hour hostage standoff in a bank. The bank customers were made to line up and stand still for hours ... just like in a regular visit.
~ Bill Maher

In New York now, they have Harvey Milk High School for gay students. They don't have much of a football team, but the half-time show ...
~ Bill Maher, ABC TV. Politically Incorrect

The IRS is auditing the NRA. I haven't had this much trouble picking sides since the Iran-Iraq war.
~ Bill Maher

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else.
~ Will Rogers

I don't know jokes; I just watch the government and report the facts.
~ Will Rogers, in Saturday Review A Rogers Thesaurus (25 August 1962)

I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.
~ Will Rogers, Speech (June 1930).

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.
~ Will Rogers, Attributed

[Y]ou can always joke about a big Man that is really big, But don't ever kid about the little fellow that thinks he is something, cause he will get sore. That's why he's little.
~ Will Rogers, from Rogers-isms: The Cowboy Philosopher On The Peace Conference (1919).

You can always joke good naturedly a big man, but be sure he is a big man before you joke about him.
~ Will Rogers

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.
~ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost. Act V, scene ii

I almost got a girl pregnant in high school. It's costing me a fortune to keep the rabbit on a life-support system.
~ Will Shriner

A Joke is a form of cruelty disguised under the mask of pleasantry.
~ Wilhelm Stekel, Disguises of Love: Psycho-analytical Sketches (1922 translation). Chapter XIX. Brevities

And then there was [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld coming out and saying, "I don't know when. I don't know where. But something bad is going to happen." And everyone else is saying, "Wait a minute, are you working with Miss Cleo or something? What is this, the Central Intuitive Agency?" ... And you have Bush, hearing about all the fighting over Kashmir, and saying, "What? It's just a sweater!"
~ Robin Williams, Tribune Media Services (14 July 2002). Williams returns to live comedy for HBO

If that man in the PTL is such a healer, why can't he make his wife's hairdo go down?
~ Robin Williams

Look at us -- we're a San Francisco wedding cake.
~ Robin Williams (on the flurry of same-sex weddings performed in San Francisco, while standing next to Billy Crystal), Performance at the 76th Annual Academy Awards, Los Angeles CA (29 February 2004).

[T]he French are going the Americans one better with their Michelin bomb: it destroys only restraurants under four stars.
~ Robin Williams, Playboy magazine (Interview; 1982).

The Russians love Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev.
~ Robin Williams

We had gay burglars the other night. They broke in and re-arranged the furniture.
~ Robin Williams

What's right is what's left if you do everything else wrong.
~ Robin Williams

When in doubt, go for the dick joke.
~ Robin Williams

When the Williams sisters play tennis, it gets pretty hot. When they start grunting, I'm in.
~ Robin Williams, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (7 March 2002).

When you look at Prince Charles, don't you think that someone in the Royal family knew someone in the Royal family?
~ Robin Williams