What’s on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement.

About Fred Allen

John Florence Sullivanmade him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the Golden Age of American radio.

More about the author

More quotes from Fred Allen

My uncle is a Southern planter. He’s an undertaker in Alabama.

Fred Allen

American comedian

A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and – I can’t remember what the third thing is.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

Fred Allen

American comedian

My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense.

Fred Allen

American comedian

A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.

Fred Allen

American comedian

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.

Fred Allen

American comedian

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I don’t have to look up my family tree, because I know that I’m the sap.

Fred Allen

American comedian

An income tax form is like a laundry list – either way you lose your shirt.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Television is a device that permits people who haven’t anything to do to watch people who can’t do anything.

Fred Allen

American comedian

The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference.

Fred Allen

American comedian

An actor’s popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.

Fred Allen

American comedian

An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.

Fred Allen

American comedian

All I know about humor is that I don’t know anything about it.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I don’t want to own anything that won’t fit into my coffin.

Fred Allen

American comedian

What’s on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement.

Fred Allen

American comedian

California is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange.

Fred Allen

American comedian

It is probably not love that makes the world go around, but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners recognize their dependence on each other for the achievement of shared and private goals.

Fred Allen

American comedian

A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.

Fred Allen

American comedian

If I could get my membership fee back, I’d resign from the human race.

Fred Allen

American comedian

An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.

Fred Allen

American comedian

The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I’d rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.

Fred Allen

American comedian

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.

Fred Allen

American comedian

A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

Fred Allen

American comedian

The last time I saw him he was walking down lover’s lane holding his own hand.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Television is the triumph of machine over people.

Fred Allen

American comedian

California is a great place to live if you’re an orange.

Fred Allen

American comedian

The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I play a musical instrument a little, but only for my own amazement.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.

Fred Allen

American comedian

During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Some movie stars wear their sunglasses even in church. They’re afraid God might recognize them and ask for autographs.

Fred Allen

American comedian

A gentleman is any man who wouldn’t hit a woman with his hat on.

Fred Allen

American comedian

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.

Fred Allen

American comedian

I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back.

Fred Allen

American comedian

Committee – a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.

Fred Allen

American comedian