Lily Tomlin
If trying harder doesn't work, try softer.Collection: Trying
Well, if I can be of any help at all, you are in worse trouble than I thought.Collection: Helping
The start to a better world is the belief that it is possible.Collection: World
When I am happy I feel like crying, but when I am sad I don’t feel like laughing. I think it is better to be happy; then you get two feelings for the price of one.Collection: Thinking
Truth is, I've always been selling out. The difference is that in the past, I looked like I had integrity because there were no buyers.Collection: Integrity
Wouldn't it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas.Collection: Nurse
The thing that most distresses me is whenever I see things over sexualized, I worry about young girls. Some of the fall out of the feminist movement is that it made younger and younger girls more sexually available. It's part of the philosophy, be your own person and be free. But, girls are so over sexualized in this culture.Collection: Girl
Having a real public outlet is how you imprint something for yourself. It's just a matter of timing. It's like you've marked your territory.Collection: Real
You can't expect insights, even the big ones, to make you suddenly understand everything. But I figure: Hey it's a step in the right direction if they leave you confused in a deeper way.Collection: Confused
I try to be cynical, but it's so hard to keep up.Collection: Cynical
I wonder what it would be like if we all became what we wanted to be when we grew up? I mean, imagine a world filled with nothing but firemen, cowboys, nurses and ballerinas.Collection: Mean
I wanted to be a stage actress. I wanted to be a New York actress and have a community with other actors. I didn't want to get famous; I always thought getting famous was a drag on you.Collection: New York
When I've had a meltdown, people will say to me, "Well, you failed to keep your sense of humor."Collection: People
The phone company handles 84 billion calls a year-everything from kings, queens, and presidents to the scum of the earth.Collection: Kings
In the depths of the night, fear grips my heart. It paralyzes my mind. But most of all, I feel very, very aloneCollection: Heart
When we talk to god, it's prayer. When god talks to us, it's schizophrenia.Collection: Prayer
9 to 5 made people aware of equal pay for equal work. It hasn't really happened, but it has come closer.Collection: Equal Pay
If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest.' I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing.Collection: Thinking
To act out something or take chances in the performance is one thing. But in terms of a camera, whatever's captured is captured so that's a little more daunting. You know you can't go back next week and fix it. Whereas in a live audience you know it's so in the moment and you just go with what's happening. First of all you never have to see it again so you don't know if you were really fulfilling it or not.Collection: Next Week
The whole idea of being in captivity in such limited space, especially in a zoo, causes elephants to suffer. They develop all kinds of foot diseases. They die. They get cysts. Not only is it painful, it eventually kills them.Collection: Zoos
Did you know, throughout the cosmos they found intelligent life forms that play to play? We are the only ones that play to win. Explains why we have more than our share of losers.Collection: Intelligent
I never thought of myself as any kind of a film star, as many films as I've made - and I've made some really fun movies with good people. I've always been paired with someone because I'm not really box office, in that carrying-a-picture sense. I've always been busy, but not in the spotlight.Collection: Stars
Language was invented because of the deep human need to complain.Collection: Complaining
Sexual freedom and liberation has to be of your own making. I'm stunned when I hear about friends' children, ten or twelve years old giving blow jobs. I just don't like the girls being used or exploited in that way. It's just indiscriminate sexual relating. It's just the isolated things.Collection: Girl
People hire me to create some kind of archetype or some culture type, or something. I guess they accept whatever I come up with.Collection: People
And yet humanity is so not evolved that how can you expect anything absolutely major to happen? Look how long, we move ahead in technology, how much do we move ahead in morality or emotion? We move ahead so minimally, minimally, minimally.Collection: Moving
It's a more ridiculing, divisive humor today.Collection: Today
We're giving jobs to people who would otherwise be out of work if we weren't exploiting cheap labor.Collection: Jobs
My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again. They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape. The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts.Collection: Crazy
Thank God kids never mean wellCollection: Mean
No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.Collection: Cynical
I was always empathetic with animals. It's a terrible and self-involved point of view that we do something because someone else is exploitable.Collection: Animal
The formula for water is H2O. Is the formula for an ice cube H2O squared?Collection: Ice
You are what you think ... geez, that's frightening.Collection: Thinking
We are people with lives, not consumers with lifestyles.Collection: People
What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down where you can find it.Collection: Golf
We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.Collection: Witty
Exercise is for people who can't handle drugs or alcohol.Collection: Exercise
I feel some part of me can wake up and be very existential and the next day wake up and be sort of in love with the universe.Collection: Next Day
After all, in private, we're all misfitsCollection: Misfits
I still believe that sex is dirty. It's just that now I wouldn't have it any other way.Collection: Sex
Being a New Yorker is never having to say you are sorry.Collection: Sorry
My politics are just inclined to be empathetic and humanistic. I grew up with so many different kinds of people with different politics, different religion, no religion, no politics, education, no education, and I was infatuated with all of them.Collection: People
Did you know, in the entire universe, we are the only intelligent life forms thought to have a Miss Universe contest?Collection: Intelligent
Does your mind feel more and more like teflon? Nothing sticks to it?Collection: Mind
There's nothing sadder than getting to the end of your life and saying, 'I didn't do it right'.Collection: Meaningful
I worry about kids today - because of the sexual revolution, they're going to grow up and never know what "dirty" means.Collection: Growing Up
There will be sex after death, we just won't be able to feel it.Collection: Love