Don Rickles quotes:

If I have learned anything, it is to keep my wife happy by sending her lavish gifts. Other men can learn from my success and send their wives and girlfriends fresh flowers for birthdays, anniversaries, and of course, Valentine's Day.

Eddie Fisher married to Elizabeth Taylor is like me trying to wash the Empire State Building with a bar of soap.

Famous people are deceptive. Deep down, they're just regular people. Like Larry King. We've been friends for forty years. He's one of the few guys I know who's really famous. One minute he's talking to the president on his cell phone, and then the next minute he's saying to me, 'Do you think we ought to give the waiter another dollar?'

Among my friends, I'm not a little Boy Scout, and they love my humor, thank God.

I don't care if the average guy on the street really knows what I'm like, as long as he knows I'm not really a mean, vicious guy. My friends and family know what I'm really like. That's what's important.

I have a wonderful road manager, and he travels with me. And my valet and friend travels with me. My little entourage is great, and they take good care of me.

You can't study comedy; it's within you. It's a personality. My humor is an attitude.

In the 45 years I've worked in casinos, I dreamed of being honored by an organization like the American Gaming Association, especially since I don't even have a hunting license.

My grandchildren just know me now as Mr. Potato Head.

You know what's funny to me? Attitude.

I enjoy mixed audiences, not one particular group. Short, tall, scientists, Jews, gentiles, whatever, as long as they breathe and like to laugh.

I stopped smoking. But my personality I still have. I get up in the morning, and not everybody loves me, so if you want to call that a bad habit, there's that.

My life was in Montreal years ago. Best food in the world.

You lose your energy, you lose that excitement and it gets the audience up.

My wife, Barbara, is great. She arranges when I do work that I have a day off between performances.

I couldn't sell air conditioners on a 98-degree day. When I demonstrated them in a showroom, I pushed the wrong button and blew the circuit.

I do situations and make fun of authority and life.

When you stand alone and sell yourself, you can't please everyone. But when you're different, you can last.

You throw your best punch, otherwise don't do it.

When you enter a room, you have to kiss his ring. I don't mind, but he has it in his back pocket.

I'd like to think my performance is today. I never try to - it's so, as you know, watching me, I have a beginning, middle and ending. But every night the show changes and I relate to an audience and I relate to the young people.

I still have drive, but everything is relative.

I never went out looking for glory.

I always say, when you're onstage you can't please everybody. I'm sure there are people who may not take to what I do, but that's okay. Thank God the majority are in my corner.

No matter where you go in this world, you will always find a Jew sitting in the beach chair next to you.

I don't walk into a dinner party and say, 'You're an idiot; give me my coat.'

Political correctness? In my humor, I never talk about politics. I was never much into all that.

My wife came into my life, and my mother still wanted to be the boss.

Every night when I go out on stage, there's always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I'm always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I'm not going to offend!

I ride a recumbent bike for half an hour every day.

Show business is my life. When I was a kid I sold insurance, but nobody laughed.

The young comedians always ask me, 'What's the secret for staying around?' I tell them, 'There is no secret - just stay around. Longevity is the most important thing.'

I have a problem, if the light goes on on TV and it blinks midnight, I don't know how to fix it.

I have no idea what I'm going to say when I stand up to give a toast. But I do know that anything I say I find funny.

I think if I took therapy, the doctor would quit. He'd just pick up the couch and walk out of the room.

People think being in your seventies means sitting around in a chair with a blanket over your legs, drooling.

The thing I love about Vegas is that it's a melting pot. It's like working Ellis Island.

Whatever you do to gain success, you have to hang in there and hope good things happen. Always think positive.

To me, the stand up part in my life is great. I know I can do that. When I get an acting chance, I'm really thrilled.

Struggling is hard because you never know what's at the end of the tunnel.

When you talk about George Burns you're talking about a living legend . . . well, a legend, anyhow.

I would describe myself as a guy that's very normal but has the tendency to rib people, but never in a mean-spirited way.

Room service is great if you want to pay $500 for a club sandwich.

When you first start out with something new, you're always a little uptight.

I mean, in my - and I'm not trying to do spilled milk, but in those days it was a little - I think it was much tougher, because you got an image, and you were in a saloon. And it was tough to come out of a saloon and to get in films, and to maintain an image, you know.

Showbiz is great if you're successful.

When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit.

Who picks your clothes - Stevie Wonder?

It's very sweet to have people say nice things about you, and I always accept that.

My mother was a Jewish General Patton.

When I first went to Vegas, there were just high-rollers and gamblers and the wise guys treated you great.

I'm very shy so I became very outgoing to protect my shyness.

Alan King, a comedian I adored, was considered society, and I was considered the Jewish kid from the neighborhood.

Italians are fantastic people, really. They can work you over in an alley while singing an opera.

Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.

Sinatra had a lot of mood swings, but he was wonderful to my wife Barbara and to me. He made no bones about who he liked and who he loved, and he had this great charisma. When he walked into a room, it stopped. I've only seen that happen with Ronald Reagan.

Johnny Carson was a big influence on me - all of those shows I did with him over the years, like, 100 of them, they made a bit of a name for me at the time, so that part of my life was very good.

Bob Hope was totally regimented. I go in and say a line like, 'Hi Bob' and I'd have to do it five times, and then Bob would take me to the writers to say the line different ways. He wouldn't let me ad-lib.

Las Vegas is the boiling pot of entertainment.

When I walk down the street in New York, I swear to God, the building constructor, the guy pounding cement and what not, will yell, 'Hey, you hockey puck!'

They always use the word 'insult' with me, but I don't hurt anybody. I wouldn't be sitting here if I did. I make fun of everybody and exaggerate all our insecurities.

An insult is mean or unkind. Milton Berle called me the Sultan of Insult, and I was called the King of Insult. But the guy that gave me the best title - and I use it to this day - was Johnny Carson. He called me Mr. Warmth.

The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.

I've been hot, I've been lukewarm, I've been freezing, but I've always been a headliner.

Even when I was in high school and the Navy, I was the guy who could rip somebody, and they'd laugh at it.

Smartphones. Who cares? Smartphones. I only have dummy phones.

Some people say funny things, but I say things funny.

My father was an insurance man and a small-time gambler. He was a good man, but he had an eye for the racehorses, and I saw how it used to bother my mother. I've never gambled a dime. Never, in all those years in Vegas.

After I graduated, I tried Broadway, which was difficult for me. It was tough to get a part on Broadway, so I just started talking to audiences at different social gatherings, and little by little I became Don Rickles - whatever that is.

Some people call me a legend and the last of the greats, and I appreciate it.

I was in World War II; I cried when they took me in the Navy. That's the last time I cried.

In our day we went from - we went into saloons. We couldn't cross over like you can today, get a television series and all of a sudden you're a major movie star, you know.

You've got to be able to sell yourself.

If something strikes me as funny, I'll put it in my performance.

Compared to what some of the young comics use for material today, I'm a priest.

I say things I get away with, and it becomes a joke.

I was 28 when my father died, and I was an only child.

I think they [Martin Scorsese, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra] liked my honesty. My personality. For that, they always treated me great. I, in turn, treated them great. No secret about it. My being who I am - that is that.

Regis Philbin is very successful in his own right. We have a new thing where he have chairs and we sit and talk to each other about my career and his career. It works pretty well if I do say so.

Famous people are deceptive. Deep down, they're just regular people. Like Larry King. We've been friends for forty years. He's one of the few guys I know who's really famous. One minute he's talking to the president on his cell phone, and then the next minute he's saying to me, Do you think we ought to give the waiter another dollar?

I can sit all day in a comfortable chair and watch ball games, but I don't need a blanket.

I never could tell a joke. I just started talking to the audience, and when the drunks would yell, "Hey, when do the broads come on?" I got good at saying, "Relax. Clear your skin up first." They called me "the insult guy," but it's never mean-spirited. I'm just exaggerating everything about us and about life.

Women were afraid of me, they were scared to death. But I always say be yourself, if you're funny then let your sense of humor go there. I mean there's no sense hiding what you feel.

I always rib people, but nobody ever gives me a hard time. I don't know why. Maybe they're afraid of what I might say. There's probably a lesson in that somewhere, but I don't know what it is.

I used to play golf. I wanted to be a better player, but after a while I realized I'd always stink. And that's when I really started to enjoy the game.

We show a lot of film [with Regis Philbin] from my career which is most enjoyable. I enjoy watching it.

My style is my personality. It's always been that way. Being a wiseguy and having fun. It's always been that way for me, when I was in high school, and in the Navy. It's not something I rehearse.

The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.

Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I'm not a black.

I've got an accountant who's been with me forty years. If he makes a mistake, he dies.

I cannot tell a joke. But I can do a situation, that it becomes a joke.

I've never had a writer, and I'm proud of that. Everything I've per­formed has been from my own head.

An insult comic is the title I was given. What I do is exaggeration. I make fun of people, at life, of myself and my surroundings.

I have to have energy because I have a lot of expenses. A couple of cars, couple of dogs and a big estate.

When I'm onstage, I'm acting.

I was sitting in the toilet and I was by myself. I was tired of playing with the roller, so I said I'd better write a book.

When you're 18, you're just so busy being scared and having fun - a crazy mixture - that you never thought of dying.

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

I've never gambled a dime. Never, in all my years in Vegas.

In the old days, that was my ad-lib for hecklers in the joints I worked. It stuck with me. I hardly say it now, say, to fans, even though people do send me hockey pucks.

Who am I to judge is what I say. I'm 90 years old, for crying out loud, and I don't sit in any chariot.

It's just to break things up between stand-up gigs. I would only do it periodically. Maybe just an East Coast thing.

That I walk around calling people 'dummy' and 'hockey puck'. I do have a different life apart from being sarcastic on stage. I might kibitz around with my friends, but I'm nothing like the person who does stand up. Nothing like that.

My main success was an attitude. Always an attitude.

My father wasn't much for show business. He was an insurance man - very well-liked, very warm. He had a lot of friends.

Al Capone's my uncle. The old days were a lot different. The Latin Casino was the big time. When I got there I figured that I was doing pretty good, because remember, I started in nothing but after hours joints. I can't even name them now, but that's how I got noticed.

I knew most of the people there who ran the places, a lot of wiseguys. They're all gone now. All good people.

I don't get into politics. I know [Donald] Trump, but I don't follow that. That's just an aside for him when he has nothing else to say. He never involved me in any of that stuff.

Hell, do I remember the first joke? I was never a jokester.

I was with George Washington at Valley Forge, sitting around before an attack... gimme a break. That's over 70 years ago already.

You got to have a lot of courage. Secondly, whatever it is you're doing you have to believe in it wholeheartedly. Thirdly, you have to be able to stand up in front of people and know that they'll laugh.

I still think funny, and people young and old still come and see me. That's flattering. The day comes that they stop coming, then I'll know that it's time to retire to the Jewish ranch.

My father when walked into a room, you could tell that everybody loved him. They really did. He was quite a man. My mother was more into the show biz atmosphere than he was.

My health, thank God, has kept my brain alive.

Frank Sinatra enjoyed my humor, so I could say almost anything to him. I mean, within reason.

I've never walked off stage and said, I shouldn't have done that. Because when you do what I do, you're like a fighter. You throw the right hand and say, That's what got me to this dance. You can't have doubt. If you have doubt, there's no show.

Once in a while, when I'm alone, I think about my age. I think, How many more years do I have on this earth? But I can't really conceive of dying. Somehow, in my head, I don't think I'll die. I know that everybody dies, of course. I just think that it'll never come to me. It's crazy, but there it is.

I'm not a big one for jokes. I can't tell a joke, believe it or not. If you gave me a thousand bucks and said, 'Don, get up at a party and tell a joke', I'm the worst.

It's tough having the last name Rickles. Luckily, my kids handled it great.

It takes many years to be a great comedian.