Mel Brooks Quotes

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Mel Brooks

Profession : Comedian

Birth : June 28, 1926

I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.

Mel Brooks

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

Mel Brooks

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

Mel Brooks

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.

Mel Brooks

If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.

Mel Brooks

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

Mel Brooks

If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.

Mel Brooks

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

Mel Brooks

It's talent. Either you got it or you ain't.

Mel Brooks

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.

Mel Brooks

You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.

Mel Brooks

He who hesitates is poor.

Mel Brooks

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.

Mel Brooks

I only direct in self-defense.

Mel Brooks

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

Mel Brooks

If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

Mel Brooks

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

Mel Brooks

I'm still a horse that can run. I may not be able to win the Derby, but what do you do when you retire? People retire and they vegetate. They go away and they dry up.

Mel Brooks

'Mad About You' was very fun.

Mel Brooks