These Bartender quotes will inspire you. A bartender (also known as a barkeep, barman, barmaid, or mixologist) is a person who formulates and serves alcoholic or soft drink beverages behind the bar, usually in a licensed establishment.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and encouraging Bartender quotes, Bartender sayings, and Bartender proverbs.
Best Bartender Quotes
- “A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “The greatest accomplishment of a bartender lies in his ability to exactly suit his customer. . .” ~ Harry Gordon Johnson
- “The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.” ~ Humphrey Bogart
- “I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated.” ~ Al McGuire
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“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “There are few professions whose primary objective is to advance the cause of humanity rather than simply to make money or accrue power. Among this limited group of humanitarians I would number teachers, nurses, bookstore owners, and bartenders.” ~ Jack McDevitt
- “I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.” ~ Rodney Dangerfield
- “By the time a bartender knows what drink a man will have before he orders, there is little else about him worth knowing.” ~ Don Marquis
- “I’m a bartender. I like recipes. They’re concretes. Was the drink recipe for seduction one shot charm and two shots self-deception, shaken, not stirred?” ~ Karen Marie Moning
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“You know you have a drinking problem when the bartender knows your name — and you’ve never been to that bar before.” ~ Zach Galifianakis
- “Lady bartenders live a tougher life than anybody knows.” ~ James Crumley , Bartender quotes life
- “A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.” ~ Jim Bishop
- “Will there be any bartenders up there in Heaven, will the pubs never close?” ~ Richard Thompson
- “You know you’re in trouble, when the bartender cries.” ~ Michael Peterson
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“A theory that you can’t explain to a bartender is probably no damn good.” ~ Ernest Rutherford
- “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.” ~ Jack Lemmon
- “An efficient bartenders first aim should be to please his customers, paying particular attention to meet the individual wishes of those whose tastes and desires he has already watched and ascertained; and, with those whose peculiarities he has had no opportunity of learning, he should politely inquire how they wish their beverages served, and use his best judgment in endeavoring to fulfill their desires to their entire satisfaction. In this way he will not fail to acquire popularity and success.” ~ Jerry Thomas
- “Yeah, I know I’m ugly… I said to a bartender, ‘Make me a zombie.’ He said ‘God beat me to it.'” ~ Rodney Dangerfield
- “You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.” ~ Dean Martin
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“Only one way to cover a story like this, and make that a double, bartender, please.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
- “I could finally quit my job as a bartender and stop dreaming that I might be Superman and know that I was. Then I started thinking about how cool it was.” ~ Brandon Routh
- “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “Set up another case bartender! The best thing for a case of nerves is a case of Scotch.” ~ W. C. Fields
- “Anorexia was there for me before I got into modeling, but because of the arena and the demands, the disease really got out of control for me. It’s like being an alcoholic and going and being a bartender.” ~ Carre Otis
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“I toured Ontario in the winter of ’48, in a touring company of The Drunkard, in which I played the bartender.” ~ Jonathan Frid
- “I was a bartender in New York and I overheard this girl saying she made $3000 doing a commercial. A kid at work told me, ‘Hey, I know this director and he’d really like you!’. So I walked into this guy’s office and was like ‘I was thinking maybe I could make $3000’ and he hired me for commercials, short films, like 15 jobs in a row.” ~ Pauley Perrette
- “Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist – whatever.” ~ Les Paul
- “There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.” ~ Raymond Chandler
- “…went to a bar for a few drinks. The bartender asked what I wanted. “Surprise me”, I said. So he showed me a naked picture of my wife.” ~ Rodney Dangerfield
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“Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain’t much of a crime.” ~ Larry McMurtry
- “A duck walks into a bar and the bartender asks, what’ll it be? The duck doesn’t answer because it’s a duck.” ~ Jodi Picoult
- “If I go
Before I’m old
Oh, brother of mine
Please don’t forget me if I go
Bartender, please
Fill my glass for me
With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free
After three days in the ground.” ~ Dave Matthews - “Guy goes into a bar with a duck under his arm. Bartender says, “Where’d you get the pig?” Guy says, “This is a duck.” Bartender says, “I was talking to the duck.”” ~ Rodney Dangerfield
- “Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, “What will you have, sir?” And I said, “A glass of hemlock.”” ~ Ernest Hemingway
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“Hey bartender, hey man, look here. Give us one more, two more, three more glasses of beer.” ~ Koko Taylor
- “It’s true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night,” the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. “You can’t fight it.” ~ Haruki Murakami
- “I mean, I’ve had bartenders and waiters and waitresses make a comment about a joke of mine, like pointing out some sort of logic error or something that I’ve never even thought about, and they’re right.” ~ Todd Barry
- “Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven.” ~ Mark Twain
- “I was frustrated because I couldn’t get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films.” ~ David O. Russell
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“If Jesus was a bartender, He would still only be half as cool as Carlos.” ~ Richard Kadrey
- “The bartenders are the regular band of Jack, and the heavenly drummer who looks up to the sky with blue eyes, with a beard, is wailing beer-caps of bottles and jamming on the cash register and everything is going to the beat – It’s the beat generation, its béat, it’s the beat to keep, it’s the beat of the heart, it’s being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown.” ~ Jack Kerouac
- “Placing a wedge of lime in the neck of a Corona bottle helps sell those beers. And where did that ritual come from? One story has it that two bartenders in California were curious how fast a ritual could spread. Astonishingly fast, they discovered.” ~ Martin Lindstrom
- “Everyone feels like they would love to be a really cool bartender in a really cool bar, but you’re still surrounded by people who want to destroy themselves with alcohol. When you look at it that way, it’s not that much fun.” ~ John Hodgman
- “The basic thing is to be humble, and pretend you’re a bartender in the tavern of life. Don’t get too comfortable and don’t really listen to anybody else. Don’t stand around with a bunch of writers and talk about writing. You know when you see plumbers at a plumbers convention, usually they’re not talking about plumbing: they’re talking about whatever it is that two men happen to talk about. They’re talking about sports, their wives and children. I just tell my students, don’t talk about writing too much, just go out and do it. Find out whatever you need to get to the mainland.” ~ James McBride
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“If you truly love me, kill the bartender.” ~ Quentin Crisp
- “I believe that in your heart you already know something is profoundly wrong. When bartenders are responsible for drunk drivers’ acts, and gunmakers are responsible for criminals’ acts, and nobody is responsible for O. J. Simpson’s acts, something is wrong.” ~ Charlton Heston
- “There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he’s in there.” ~ Charles Bukowski
- “Next to the defeated politician, the writer is the most vocal and inventive griper on earth. He sees hardship and unfairness wherever he looks. His agent doesn’t love him (enough). The blank sheet of paper is an enemy. The publisher is a cheapskate. The critic is a philistine. The public doesn’t understand him. His wife doesn’t understand him. The bartender doesn’t understand him.” ~ Peter Mayle
- “My parents were working class folks. My dad was a bartender for most of his life, my mom was a maid and a cashier and a stock clerk at WalMart. We were not people of financial means in terms of significant financial means. I always told them, ‘I didn’t always have what I wanted. I always had what I needed.’ My parents always provided that.” ~ Marco Rubio
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“Bless my soul,” whispered the old bartender, “Harry Potter . . . what an honor.” ~ J. K. Rowling
- “I was an amazing bartender and a great waiter. I think, in a way, that was my acting school.” ~ Nick Frost
- “This guitar is such a pal. It’s a psychiatrist. It’s a doggone bartender. It’s a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I’ve got a problem, I’ll go pick my guitar up and play. It’s the greatest pal in the whole world.” ~ Les Paul
- “Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.” ~ Joel Spolsky
- “He had a habit of remarking to bartenders that he didn’t see any sense in mixing whiskey with water since the whiskey was already wet.” ~ Joseph Mitchell
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“A conservative, a liberal, and a moderate walk into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Hi, Mitt.'” ~ Foster Friess
- “I’ve always thought that bartenders and hairstylists would be great interrogators because all day long they have to listen to people talk. They could probably make some fugitive spill the beans.” ~ Joelle Carter
- “A Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a Muslim mullah all walk into a bar, and the bartender says:
– What is this, a joke?
– Сhurch is the only organization that exists primarily for the benefit of non-members.” ~ C. S. Lewis - “I had a bartender friend once tell me about a $14.00 shot of vodka, this was years ago it’s probably more now. I thought that was crazy. From what I understand, vodka has no taste. I think people like the taste of their money.” ~ Ian MacKaye
- “The American dream is about achieving happiness. When you become a fire fighter, a police officer or a teacher or a nurse, you know you’re not going to become a billionaire. And what my parents achieved working as a bartender and a maid at a hotel after arriving here with nothing, no education, no money. The first words my dad learned in English where I’m looking for a job.You know what my parents achieved? They owned a home in a safe and stable neighborhood. They retired with dignity and they left all four of their children better off than themselves.” ~ Marco Rubio
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“I feel sorry for people who do not have a Bible to lean on.” ~ Adrian Rogers
- “I gave examples from my clinical practice of how love was not wholly a thought or feeling. I told of how that very evening there would be some man sitting at a bar in the local village, crying into his beer and sputtering to the bartender how much he loved his wife and children while at the same time he was wasting his family’s money and depriving them of his attention. We recounted how this man was thinking love and feeling love–were they not real tears in his eyes?–but he was not in truth behaving with love.” ~ M. Scott Peck
- “I was a bartender for a long time, so I know how to make drinks, but I’m more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did, and why I get to produce more writing than she did, and why my marriage isn’t in dire straits.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
- “I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films. I got grants from NYSCA and NEA for an idea, which later became ‘Huckabees,’ about a guy in a Chinese restaurant who had microphones on every table and heard every personal conversation and would write perversely personal fortunes.” ~ David O. Russell
- “Pain is subtle. He has cold grey fingers. His voice is horse from crying & screaming… When people try to avoid him, he follows them silently & turns upas the bartender, or the bus driver… Pain has an elaborate filing system for keeping track of everyone… Pain respects people who are willing to take risks. If you… face him directly, he will give you a special ointment so your wounds don’t fester.” ~ J. Ruth Gendler
- “Women, you overheated dipsomaniacs, never passing up a chance to wangle a drink, a great boon to bartenders but a bane to us–not to mention our crockery and our woolens!” ~ Aristophanes
