Andy Rooney citations

“If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.”

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.”

“If you smile when you are alone, then you really mean it.”

“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly."
~ (1919-), American writer, producer, humorist.”

“It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.”

“The 50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.”

“I've learned…. That opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.”

“I've learned that no matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend to act goofy with.”

“I've learned…. That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.”

“the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.”

“I've learned that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.”

“I'd be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn't believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don't think it does.”

“Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.”

“I'm always on the lookout for something good about people. Often months go by.”

“There's nobody like Andy, and there never will be. He'll hate hearing this, but he's an American original.”

“I wish people who sell things would stop trying to guess how many of something we want to buy. I want to buy things one at a time.”

“At the end of every television broadcast, the names of the people who worked on it are listed. Why, you may ask yourself sometimes, would so many people want to take credit for such a bad show? Well, its just like what's happened to the dollar. Credits in television suffer from inflation. There are more of them and they arent worth what they used to be, even on a good show.”

“Ive had quite a few complaints lately from people who like it when I complain about things. They say I havent complained about anything lately. So tonight, for you complaint fans, I have a complaint.”

“It's a sad day at 60 Minutes and for everybody here at CBS News. It's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much.”

“I want to live my next life backwards: You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day. Then you get kicked out for being too healthy. Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension. Then when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years until you're too young to work. You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you're generally promiscuous. Then you go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, and you have no responsibilities. Then you become a baby, and then… You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions - central heating, room service on tap, and then… You finish off as an orgasm.”

“Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.”

“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.”

“The one affectation I have forced on the publisher … are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.”

“President Reagan must be happy over how bad the weather's been this winter, because its the one thing no one's blaming on him. Theres nothing television news likes better than bad weather, and we sure get a lot of it in the United States.”