Donald Jay Rickles was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and author, known especially for his insult comedy. His film roles included Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) with Clark Gable, Kelly’s Heroes (1970) with Clint Eastwood, and Casino (1995) with Robert De Niro; beginning in 1976, he enjoyed a two-year run starring in the NBC television sitcom C.P.O. Sharkey and had his own sitcom called The Don Rickles Show (1972). These Don Rickles quotes will motivate you.
Best Don Rickles Quotes
- “Every night when I go out on stage, there’s always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I’m always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I’m not going to offend!” ~ Don Rickles
- “Italians are fantastic people, really. They can work you over in an alley while singing an opera.” ~ Don Rickles
- “No matter where you go in this world, you will always find a Jew sitting in the beach chair next to you.” ~ Don Rickles
- “When you enter a room, you have to kiss his ring. I don’t mind, but he has it in his back pocket.” ~ Don Rickles
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“I think if I took therapy, the doctor would quit. He’d just pick up the couch and walk out of the room.” ~ Don Rickles
- “When you stand alone and sell yourself, you can’t please everyone. But when you’re different, you can last.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I never could tell a joke. I just started talking to the audience, and when the drunks would yell, “Hey, when do the broads come on?” I got good at saying, “Relax. Clear your skin up first.” They called me “the insult guy,” but it’s never mean-spirited. I’m just exaggerating everything about us and about life.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Who picks your clothes – Stevie Wonder?” ~ Don Rickles
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“Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I’m not a black.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I always rib people, but nobody ever gives me a hard time. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re afraid of what I might say. There’s probably a lesson in that somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I used to play golf. I wanted to be a better player, but after a while I realized I’d always stink. And that’s when I really started to enjoy the game.” ~ Don Rickles
- “You got to have a lot of courage. Secondly, whatever it is you’re doing you have to believe in it wholeheartedly. Thirdly, you have to be able to stand up in front of people and know that they’ll laugh.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Famous people are deceptive. Deep down, they’re just regular people. Like Larry King. We’ve been friends for forty years. He’s one of the few guys I know who’s really famous. One minute he’s talking to the president on his cell phone, and then the next minute he’s saying to me, Do you think we ought to give the waiter another dollar?” ~ Don Rickles
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“Some people say funny things – but I say things funny.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Once in a while, when I’m alone, I think about my age. I think, How many more years do I have on this earth? But I can’t really conceive of dying. Somehow, in my head, I don’t think I’ll die. I know that everybody dies, of course. I just think that it’ll never come to me. It’s crazy, but there it is.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Whatever you do to gain success, you have to hang in there and hope good things happen. Always think positive.” ~ Don Rickles
- “You throw your best punch, otherwise don’t do it.” ~ Don Rickles
- “If I were to insult people and mean it, that wouldn’t be funny.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Some people call me a legend and the last of the greats, and I appreciate it.” ~ Don Rickles
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“Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I don’t care if the average guy on the street really knows what I’m like, as long as he knows I’m not really a mean, vicious guy. My friends and family know what I’m really like. That’s what’s important.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Women were afraid of me, they were scared to death. But I always say be yourself, if you’re funny then let your sense of humor go there. I mean there’s no sense hiding what you feel.” ~ Don Rickles
- “My style is my personality. It’s always been that way. Being a wiseguy and having fun. It’s always been that way for me, when I was in high school, and in the Navy. It’s not something I rehearse.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I have no idea what I’m going to say when I stand up to give a toast. But I do know that anything I say I find funny.” ~ Don Rickles
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“My main success was an attitude. Always an attitude.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I’ve never walked off stage and said, I shouldn’t have done that. Because when you do what I do, you’re like a fighter. You throw the right hand and say, That’s what got me to this dance. You can’t have doubt. If you have doubt, there’s no show.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I have a problem, if the light goes on on TV and it blinks midnight, I don’t know how to fix it.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I think they [Martin Scorsese, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra] liked my honesty. My personality. For that, they always treated me great. I, in turn, treated them great. No secret about it. My being who I am – that is that.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I can sit all day in a comfortable chair and watch ball games, but I don’t need a blanket.” ~ Don Rickles
- “It’s very sweet to have people say nice things about you, and I always accept that.” ~ Don Rickles
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“Smartphones. Who cares? Smartphones. I only have dummy phones.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I’ve never had guys sit me down and say this is what you’ve got to do. It’s my personality that makes me one of a kind, and I believe that.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Regis Philbin is very successful in his own right. We have a new thing where he have chairs and we sit and talk to each other about my career and his career. It works pretty well if I do say so.” ~ Don Rickles
- “The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.” ~ Don Rickles
- “When you talk about George Burns you’re talking about a living legend . . . well, a legend, anyhow.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I always say that comedians and actors were all kind of shy when they were young. I was very, believe it or not, kind of embarrassed as a child. But my mother was a very strong lady and she was the one that kept it going when I thought it would be over for me as a performer. She was always my inspiration and she was a big influence on me.” ~ Don Rickles
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“You can’t study comedy; it’s within you. It’s a personality. My humor is an attitude.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I’m not a big one for jokes. I can’t tell a joke, believe it or not. If you gave me a thousand bucks and said, “Don, get up at a party and tell a joke,” I’m the worst.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I’m very shy so I became very outgoing to protect my shyness.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I was sitting in the toilet and I was by myself. I was tired of playing with the roller, so I said I’d better write a book.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Eddie Fisher married to Elizabeth Taylor is like me trying to wash the Empire State Building with a bar of soap.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Who am I to judge is what I say. I’m 90 years old, for crying out loud, and I don’t sit in any chariot.” ~ Don Rickles
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“Half the battle is that people have to like you before you say one joke, one bit of humor.” ~ Don Rickles
- “They always use the word ‘insult’ with me, but I don’t hurt anybody. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I did. I make fun of everybody and exaggerate all our insecurities.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I take pride in being very unique in what I do. Nobody else can do what I do and I don’t mean to say that egotistically, it’s just something in my personality.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I don’t feel an obligation to give everyone a hard time, but when they’re important people, it’s fun.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I’ve got an accountant who’s been with me forty years. If he makes a mistake, he dies.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I do situations and make fun of authority and life.” ~ Don Rickles Quotes
- “That I walk around calling people ‘dummy’ and ‘hockey puck’. I do have a different life apart from being sarcastic on stage. I might kibitz around with my friends, but I’m nothing like the person who does stand up. Nothing like that.” ~ Don Rickles
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“Showbiz is great if you’re successful.” ~ Don Rickles
- “An insult comic is the title I was given. What I do is exaggeration. I make fun of people, at life, of myself and my surroundings.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Struggling is hard because you never know what’s at the end of the tunnel.” ~ Don Rickles
- “In the old days, that was my ad-lib for hecklers in the joints I worked. It stuck with me. I hardly say it now, say, to fans, even though people do send me hockey pucks.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Frank Sinatra enjoyed my humor, so I could say almost anything to him. I mean, within reason.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I don’t really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke.” ~ Don Rickles
- “When you’re 18, you’re just so busy being scared and having fun – a crazy mixture – that you never thought of dying.” ~ Don Rickles
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“I have to have energy because I have a lot of expenses. A couple of cars, couple of dogs and a big estate.” ~ Don Rickles
- “In the 45 years I’ve worked in casinos, I dreamed of being honored by an organization like the American Gaming Association, especially since I don’t even have a hunting license.” ~ Don Rickles
- “The thing I love about Vegas is that it’s a melting pot. It’s like working Ellis Island.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I don’t get into politics. I know [Donald] Trump, but I don’t follow that. That’s just an aside for him when he has nothing else to say. He never involved me in any of that stuff.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Show business is my life. When I was a kid I sold insurance, but nobody laughed.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I have my own gym. When you do jokes and they sell, you get a gym.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I’ve never had a writer, and I’m proud of that. Everything I’ve performed has been from my own head.” ~ Don Rickles
- “I don’t really tell a joke, I react to situations. The whole thing is just looking at somebody and showing all our weaknesses and exaggerating them, and that’s how it becomes funny.” ~ Don Rickles
- “Room service is great if you want to pay $500 for a club sandwich.” ~ Don Rickles
