Jonathan Winters's Quotes

I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it.

Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.

Well, the most terrible fear that anybody should have is not war, is not a disease, not cancer or heart problems or food poisoning - it's a man or a woman without a sense of humor.

If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.

Discipline is tough for a guy who is a rebel.

I don't do jokes. The characters are my jokes.

I don't paint every day. I'm not that motivated. I don't do anything the same every day.

I know you can be funny without being filthy.

My mother and father were very strange people. They tried to be funny which is always very sad to me.

My mother had a radio show - a Barbara Walters type of gal and was very successful for about 20-some years on a radio station.

My paintings and comedy have a lot in common. They are both improvisations based on observation.

As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things. I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.

I began painting well before I started doing comedy. In fact, when I came out of the war in 1946, I enrolled in art school in Dayton, Ohio. I painted for three years, and then show business took hold.

I find painting a much slower process than comedy, where you can go a mile a minute verbally and hope to God that some of the people out there understand you.

I was always an observer, even as a child. I could be satisfied to sit in a car for 3 hours and just look at the street go by while my mother went shopping.

I've done for the most part pretty much what I intended - I ended up doing comedy, writing and painting. I've had a ball. And as I get older, I just become an older kid.