Mel Brooks Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

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

Mel Brooks
Farts are a repressed minority. The mouth gets to say all kinds of things, but the other place is supposed to keep quite. But maybe our lower colons have something interesting to say. Maybe we should listen to them.

Mel Brooks
If I get on the soapbox and wax eloquently, it'll be blown away in the wind, but if I do Springtime for Hitler it'll never be forgotten. I think you can bring down totalitarian governments faster by using ridicule than you can with invective.

Mel Brooks
A lot of young ladies told me they auditioned their husbands-to-be with the record [The Cannes Film Festival]. If they really enjoyed the record and really laughed, he was a real prospect. But if he didn't understand it, that was it.

Mel Brooks
I hung around with guys two years older. Why should they let this puny kid hang out with them? I gave them a reason. I became their jester. Also, they were afraid of my tongue. I had it sharpened and I'd stick it in their eye.

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

Mel Brooks
Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So, for every ten Jews, beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters.

Mel Brooks
Angel of Death ain't kissing me! I'm full of garlic!

Mel Brooks
I was adored. I was always in the air, hurled up and kissed and thrown in the air again. Until I was six, my feet didn't touch the ground.

Mel Brooks
If nobody were around, I would describe myself as the spitting image of Robert Redford. If somebody were around, I'd say I'm closer to the spitting image of Leon Trotsky. I'm a bon vivant, a sophisticate, a member of the upper classes who doesn't wear glasses.

Mel Brooks
Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny.

Mel Brooks
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.

Mel Brooks
Springtime for Hitler and Germany,
Deutschland is happy and gay.
We're moving to a faster pace,
Look out, here comes the Master Race!

Mel Brooks
We were so poor my mother couldn't afford to have me; the lady next door gave birth to me.

Mel Brooks
Let's face it, sweetheart, without Jews, fags, and Gypsies, there is no theatre.

Mel Brooks
I'm always stunned when I find out people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren't Jewish. How could I love them so much?

Mel Brooks
I spent a lot of time in the artillery. Too noisy. Could not take the noise. All through the war, two cigarette butts stuck in my ears. Couldn't read, couldn't think, couldn't even make a phone call. Baghamoooooommmmm! Brrllaggghhaarrooooooooooommmmm! And then they started shooting.

Mel Brooks
Some critics are emotionally desiccated, personally about as attractive as a year-old peach in a single girl's refrigerator.

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

Mel Brooks
And, of course, with the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth—the critic.

Mel Brooks
Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before.

Mel Brooks
Interviewer: You've been accused of vulgarity.
Mel Brooks: Bullshit!

Mel Brooks
Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even go through his mind on its way to the page.

Mel Brooks
How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?

Mel Brooks
Even in English, Jews talked different. Gentiles have Rs. Jews were not given Rs by God. Gentiles said, "PaRk the caR." Jews said, "Pahk the cah."

Mel Brooks
We Romans are rich. We've got a lot of gods. We've got a god for everything. The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation…but I hear that's coming quickly.

Mel Brooks
We [Brooks and Carl Reiner] hang out together. Tonight, for instance, we're going to eat at Pritikin. But we can't hang out afterwards because it's very gassy food.

Mel Brooks
Never, never try to be funny! The actors must be serious. Only the situation must be absurd. Funny is in the writing, not in the performing.

Mel Brooks
Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
The world's a stage. We're unrehearsed.

Mel Brooks
Tragedy is if I cut my finger. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.

Mel Brooks