Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‘elephant’.

Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

I’d sooner be called a successful crook than a destitute monarch.

I am for people. I can’t help it.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves.

A man’s true character comes out when he’s drunk.

I don’t believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

In the end, everything is a gag.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

We think too much and feel too little.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

Brunettes are troublemakers. They’re worse than the Jews.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‘elephant’.

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.