25 of the Funniest Jerry Seinfeld Quotes

A collection of hilarious and thoughtful quotes from Jerry Seinfeld, a generation’s favorite comedian.

Ready to feel old yet? It’s really been 30 years since the first episode of Seinfeld aired. This hilarious show about four friends living in New York City might have ended its run in 1998, but its influence still stands to this day. So why not celebrate this beloved show’s anniversary by reading some of the funniest quotes of Jerry Seinfeld himself? For some heartfelt laughs, jump right into these 25 hilarious Jerry Seinfeld quotes.

Philly Fights Cancer: Round 4Lisa Lake/Getty Images

  1. There [are] just two things I’d need to find out everything I want to know about everyone: 1) Let me see them drive; 2) let me hear them talk about marriage … That’s going to tell me exactly your relationship to the world.
  2. Stand-up comedy is a counter to the technology boom. We live in an age of gushing information … [and] the human voice is the opposite of that … We crave contact. I think it’s cool and interesting and odd that one person onstage can give you that.
  3. You need talent, you need brains, and you need confidence. Those are the three things you need to do virtually anything. Confidence is a fascinating commodity. There’s no upper limit on the usefulness of it, as long as it doesn’t bleed into arrogance.
  4. Nobody wants the Oscars to be good … I’m going to watch it regardless. It’s just something we need to do. It’s like a husband and wife occasionally are going to have a fight. That’s what the Oscars are—something we … do from time to time.
  5. The advice I would give [the younger me]—or any young person—would be “Keep your head up in failure and your head down in success.”
  6. If you have something, anything, an ability of some kind, you want to use it. That, I think, is the essence of human living … The idea is to do more in life … Money is nice, but it’s not what really makes you feel good.
  7. I see these guys in Cirque du Soleil … [and] one guy balances on the other guy. And it gets a polite round of applause. I’m like, How hard is that? Why is that guy not the most famous guy? It’s so much harder than what I do.     Source: Esquire
  8. The bedtime routine for my kids is like this Royal Coronation Jubilee Centennial of rinsing and plaque … and the stuffed-animal semicircle of emotional support. And I’ve gotta read eight different books. You know what my bedtime story was when I was a kid? Darkness!
  9. My three rules for living: First, bust your ass … Second, pay attention. Learn from everything and everyone … My third rule: Fall in love. Fall in love with your street, your tennis game … Someone could say, “I love this fork,” and I’d think that was great.
  10. I’ll say [to my kids], “OK, it’s time for dinner.” And they go, “Oh, like I didn’t already know that.” I say, “That’s me; you can’t do me!”
  11. I read that the number one fear of the average person is [public] speaking … Number two was death. To me, that means that, to the average person, if you were going to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.
  12. A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
  13. I am so busy doing nothing… that the idea of doing anything – which as you know, always leads to something – cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.
  14. It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.
  15. My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.
  16. Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
  17. The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!
  18. To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.
  19. Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God’s final word on where your lips end.
  20. A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.
  21. I think it’s funny to be delicate with subjects that are explosive.
  22. Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you’ve got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.
  23. That’s the true spirit of Christmas; people being helped by people other than me.
  24. The reactions of audiences are interesting.
  25. We were somewhat unsupervised. The audience was there and the network is not going to complain if everyone’s liking the show.

Reader's Digest
Originally Published in Reader's Digest