188 Quotes by Jerry Lewis

I've had great success being a total idiot.

When we reached the car that was waiting to take us back to the Copa, Dean actually spoke to me for the first time in weeks. "You did that good, pal," he said. "Thanks," I said, and then we were quiet. Very quiet.

He watched me breathe. He knew my breath.

When I awoke on Wednesday afternoon, I understood how an amputee must feel.

Pity? [If] you don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair, stay in your house!

I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don't have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.

Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue - nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us.

It'll keep you alive for another 10 years if you get yourself a laugh once a day: either provoke it, or look around in the wildest laboratory in the world, the public.

From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you're gonna have problems.