106 Mel Brooks Quotes

Mel Brooks quotes

1. Chorus: 'Hope for the best. Expect the worst. / Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.'

2. Jim 'The Waco Kid' (Gene Wilder): 'My name is Jim, most people call me... Jim.'

3. Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): 'Mornin', ma'am! And isn't it a lovely mornin'?' Old Woman: 'Up yours, nigger!' Jim 'The Waco Kid' (Gene Wilder) [consoling Bart afterwards]: 'What did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny'? 'Make yourself at home'? 'Marry my daughter'? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers... these are people of the land... the common clay of the New West. You know - morons.'

4. Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): 'Excuse me while I whip this out.'

5. Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): 'Where the white women at?'

6. Railway Worker : 'You shifty nigger! They said you was hung!' Sheriff Bart : 'And they was right!'

7. Josephus (Gregory Hines): 'I'm Josephus, and I'm the main course over at the Colosseum!'

8. Count de Monet (Harvey Korman) [consistently mispronounced as 'money']: 'Bearnaise, do we have any of those delicious raisins left?' Bearnaise (Andreas Voutsinas) : 'You ate yours. These are mine.' Count de Monet: 'Au contraire, they are mine! I paid for them! Hand them over!' Bearnaise [sotto voce, mimicking]: ''I paid for them! They're mine!'' [Blows a raspberry] Count de Monet: 'Don't be saucy with me, Bearnaise.'

9. Count de Monet: 'It is said that the people are revolting' King Louis XVI (Mel Brooks): 'You said it. They stink on ice.'

10. Impoverished Paris Street Merchant (Jack Carter): 'Rats, rats for sale. Get your rats. Good for rat stew, rat soup, or the ever-popular ratatouille.'

11. Other Street Merchant:'Nothing, I have absolutely nothing for sale!'

12. King Louis XVI [prior to his arrest]: 'It's good to be the king. (Also used in Robin Hood- Men In Tights and The Producers [Musical])'

13. Tomas de Torquemada: 'It's better to lose your skullcap than your skull.'

14. Moses (Mel Brooks): 'God has given us these fifteen- (after dropping one of the tablets)Oy. Ten-ten commandments!'

15. Revolutionary Leader(Cloris Leachman):And now, let us end this meeting on a high note. (Proceeds to sing a sharp high note, followed by the rest of the revolutionaries.

16. Jail Inmates: Eighty fff....Eighty fff....Eighty fff....Eighty fff....Eighty Six!

17. Ahchoo (Dave Chappelle): 'Man, white men can't jump!!'

18. King Richard (Patrick Stewart): 'From this day forward, all toilets in this kingdom shall be known as...'John's'!'

19. Little John: 'Let's face it - you've got to be a man to wear tights!'

20. Man In Front of Castle: 'Hey Abbot!'

21. Townspeople: A black sheriff? Blinkin: He's Black?! Ahchoo: Why not? It worked in Blazing Saddles.

22. Robin Hood: Watch my back! Achoo: Yo' back just got punched twice.

23. Little John Blinkin, fix your boobs, you look like a bleeding picasso

24. Blinkin Robin, you lost your arms in battle, but you grew some nice boobs (Blinkin gropes the Venus De Milo statue left behind after creditors take away Loxley Castle)

25. Robin Hood: Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with a English accent.

26. Sheriff of Rotingham King illegal forest to pig wild in it a is!

27. Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): 'I see your schwartz is as big as mine.'

28. Radar Officer (Michael Winslow): 'I've lost the sweeps, the bleeps, and the creeps!' [Explains via vocal sound effects] Dark Helmet [aside to Colonel Sandurz]: 'That's not all he's lost.'

29. Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): 'What? You went over my helmet?'

30. President Skroob (Mel Brooks): 'What the hell, it works on Star Trek!'

31. Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): 'What's the matter Colonel Sandurz... chicken?!'

32. Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): 'I knew it, I'm surrounded by Assholes.' (This follows everyone on the bridge announcing that their last name is 'Asshole.')

33. Lonestar (Bill Pullman): 'That's all we needed, a Druish Princess!' Mel Brooks in the director's Commentary : 'I'm both proud and ashamed of that line'

34. Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): 'That's it, baby, when you've got it, flaunt it, flaunt it!'

35. Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): 'I'm wearing a cardboard belt!'

36. Stormtrooper Mel (Mel Brooks): 'Don't be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party!'

37. LSD as Adolf Hitler (Dick Shawn): 'Heil Baby!'

38. Lead Tenor Stormtrooper (John Barrowman): 'Springtime, for Hitler, and Germany / Winter, for Poland and France!'

39. Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): 'How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?'

40. Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder): 'Actors are not animals! They're human beings!' Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): 'They are? Have you ever eaten with one?'

41. Igor (Marty Feldman): 'My grandfather used to work for your grandfather. Of course the rates have gone up.'

42. Igor (Marty Feldman) (limping off): 'Walk this way' - and Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) limps off after him.

43. Dr. Frankenstein: (Gene Wilder): 'Igor, would you give me a hand with the bags?' Igor: (Marty Feldman): '[doing a Groucho Marx] Certainly, you take the blonde and I'll take the one in the turban.'

44. Igor: (Marty Feldman): 'Sed-a...' Inga: (Teri Garr): 'Sed-a...' Igor: (Marty Feldman): 'Dirty word! He said a dirty word!'

45. Dr. Frankenstein 'Damn your eyes!' Igor (pointing at his lazy eye) 'Too late!'

46. As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.

47. If they [presidents] can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.

48. Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

49. [explaining that Paul Revere was Anti-Semitic] He was scared they were moving into the neighborhood. 'They're coming, they're coming. The Yiddish, they're coming'

50. After I eat asparagus...

51. You know Cuneiform? You know Sanskrit? It's neither of those.

52. Angel of Death ain't kissing me! I'm full of garlic!

53. It's Wheird, there's an H in there. Gotta hit that H otherwise they think I'm some sort of a kook!

54. [on ancient poetry] Nog Nog! Mkellen bebog! V'luch Matuch Maluch M'tog!

55. [on the greatest invention] Liquid Prell.

56. Excuse me, is this England? (while in a Hitler costume, after crash landing in England at the height of the Battle of Britian)

57. Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

58. Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

59. Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

60. Humor is just another defense against the universe.

61. I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.

62. If I got a paper cut, that's a tragedy. If you fell down an open manhole and died, that's comedy.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

63. I only direct in self-defense.

64. I'm the only Jew that's made a nickel off of Hitler!

65. Lady, it rose below vulgarity.

66. I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.

67. If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

68. Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.

69. Who's the dummy writing this show?!?! (from The Electric Company)

70. You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.

71. Wit is sharper than the sharpest dagger.

72. Good comedy is never frivolous. It's based on human experience, on human adventure, on human feelings. So it has to be profound.

73. You could never give your mother as much as she gave you.

74. The iron test is: Do you laugh? If you laugh, you know they're gonna laugh.

75. It's not like I've got these lines in a trunk that are waiting to come out in the next show. But when I'm writing a song that references body organs, you can bet genitalia will be at the top of my list.

76. Funny depends on coincidental circumstances.

77. Risk means guessing at the outcome, but never second-guessing.

78. Why should I indulge myself and do a David Lean-ish kind of film? I could do my little Jewish Brief Encounter and disguise it - shorten the noses. But it wouldn't be as much fun as delivering my dish of insanity'.

79. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together.

80. Oh, I'm not a true genius. I'm a near genius. I would say I'm a short genius. I'd rather be tall and normal than a short genius.

81. Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So, for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.

82. You're young forever when you write. Alfred Hitchcock directed until the day he died. As long as you don't have any dementia or Alzheimer's, if you have your All-Bran every day and clear yourself out, I think your brains are gonna be all right.

83. On his late costar, Zero Mostel:

84. On his late Blazing Saddles star, Cleavon Little:

85. On Woody Allen:

86. On his wife, Anne Bancroft:

1. That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.

2. Comedy is lively, comedy is joy, and that's what keeps us [people] going, we've got to look forward to little, little happiness's. Little, little joys, and comedy is very, very important, it's a vital. We underestimate its value, but we should see more comedies. Comedy is life giving, it's invigorating. I really believe it.

3. All right, I am often brash, rude and brutally direct. Someday I'm going to die and I don't have time to toe-dance around the periphery of hatred.

4. I don't think in terms of results at all. I think: what next insanity can I shock the world with?

5. My mother is very short - four-eleven. She could walk under tables and never hit her head.

6. The audience. They see the name Mel Brooks, they want something really funny. They don't want to be moved; they don't want to be taught any lessons. [...] I get more letters for Twelve Chairs and Life Stinks than I get from any other movies, because people actually agree with the philosophy, or were moved, or they love the movie.

7. I realised that all one really had to do was just observe. Observe and slightly exaggerate, and you had comedy. Instead of creating a mythical premise for a stupid joke, I found playing off truth got the best result.

8. Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.

9. I knew it... I'm surrounded by assholes!

10. I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.

11. But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.

12. 'Mad About You' was very fun.

13. Immortality is a by-product of good work. Masterpieces are not for artists, they're for critics. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together. My message to the world is 'Let's swing, sing, shout, make noise! Let's not mimic death before our time comes! Let's be wet and noisy!'

14. If Ivan the Terrible had been kissed and loved between zero and three, he probably would have become Ivan Not So Terrible. If you're Jewish, you have a small smile on your face. Because you know the rest are wrong and you don't want to hurt their feelings.

15. Immortality is a by-product of good work.

16. There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere.

17. A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

18. I also try to surround myself with people I love - make a family out of the company. So I tend to use the same people over and over. There's a sort of Mel Brooks Repertory Company.

19. I started with [Leo] Tolstoy and I was overwhelmed. Tolstoy writes like an ocean, in huge, rolling waves, and it doesn't look like it was processed through his thinking. It feels very natural. You don't question whether Tolstoy's right or wrong. His philosophy is housed in interrelating characters, so it's not up for grabs.

20. When I was a little kid at home, I thought the whole world was Jewish. For years I thought Roosevelt was Jewish. I loved him. I thought of him as my father. I'm always stunned when I find out that people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren't Jewish. How could I love them so much?