Quotes by Leo Rosten

“I will never give in to old age until I become old. And Im not old yet!”

“Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined”

“Extremists think communication means agreeing with them.”

“I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe”

“Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.”

“Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.”

“Dogs are getting bigger, according to a leading dog manufacturer”

The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you cant help it.

Anybody who hates dogs and babies cant be all bad.

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.

People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.

O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.

I have admired W.C. Fields since the day he advanced upon Baby LeRoy with an ice pick. Any man who hates dogs and babies cant be all bad.

First-rate people hire first-rate people second-rate people hire third-rate people.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Extremists think communication means agreeing with them.

Why did God give me two ears and one mouth? So that I will hear more and talk less.

We see things as we are, not as they are.