I don’t know about you, but if you ask me about the movies that made my childhood, the face that pops up in my mind is Robin Williams’. From Mrs. Doubtfire to Bicentennial Man, Good Morning, Vietnam, and Dead Poets Society, there’s probably not a single ’80s or ’90s kid who didn’t grow up fascinated by his personality and talent.
Robin Williams is a Hollywood icon who has left behind a legacy of pure comedy. His funny lines made him one of the most hilarious and talented actors of his time, and when he died, he left cinephiles and stand-up comedy fans with a void in their chests. His death was especially heartbreaking because it came so suddenly and unexpectedly. He had been battling depression for years, but no one outside of his family and friends knew how serious it had become until the news came out.
He was a man who always seemed to know what to do. He was famous for his improvisational skills, body language, and facial expressions that made the audience burst out laughing. You could always count on him to have something funny up his sleeve at any given moment, which is why it’s so hard to imagine this comedic genius not being able to see a glimmer of hope around him.
Even though we will never see him in a new blockbuster on our screens again, we can still remember Robin Williams’ best lines and performances with great joy and nostalgia. Today marks his birthday, and we thought to honor it with a collection of his greatest one-liners and movie quotes.
#1
“I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.”
#2
“I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy. Because they know what it feels like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anybody else to feel like that.”
#3
“Time is the best teacher, unfortunately, it kills all of its students.”
#4
“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”
#5
“My childhood was really nice. My parents never forced me to do anything; it was always, ‘If you want to do that, fine.’ When I told my father I was going to be an actor, he said, ‘Fine, but study welding just in case.'”
#6
“You know what music is? God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe; harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere even the stars.”
#7
“The Second Amendment says we have the right to bear arms, not to bear artillery.”
#8
“I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.”
#9
“All it takes is a beautiful fake smile to hide an injured soul.”
#10
“Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma.”
#11
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
#12
“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”
#13
“Don’t associate yourself with toxic people. It’s better to be alone and love yourself than surrounded by people that make you hate yourself.”
#14
“What’s wrong with death, sir? What are we so mortally afraid of? Why can’t we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity, and decency, and God forbid, maybe even humor? Death is not the enemy, gentlemen. If we’re going to fight a disease, let’s fight one of the most terrible diseases of all, indifference.”
#15
“We’ve had cloning in the South for years. It’s called cousins.”
#16
“Please, don’t worry so much. Because in the end none of us have very long on this earth. Life is fleeting. And if you’re ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky.”
#17
“When I was growing up they used to say, ‘Robin, drugs can kill you.’ Now that I’m 58 my doctor’s telling me, ‘Robin, you need drugs to live.’ I realize now that my doctor is also a dealer…”
#18
“The things we fear the most have already happened to us.”
#19
“Death is nature’s way of saying, ‘Your table is ready.'”
#20
“If it’s the Psychic Network why do they need a phone number?”
#21
“We get to choose who we let in our weird little worlds.”
#22
“Good people end up in Hell because they can’t forgive themselves.”
#23
“Make your life spectacular. I know I did.”
#24
“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.”
#25
“Stop being afraid of getting older. With age comes wisdom and confidence.”
#26
“Imagining something is better than remembering something.”
#27
“Sometimes you got to specifically go out of your way to get into trouble. It’s called fun.”
#28
“I don’t have a college degree, and my father didn’t have a college degree, so when my son, Zachary, graduated from college, I said, ‘My boy’s got learnin’!'”
#29
“There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot.”
#30
“The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying, ‘Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.’ She’s got a baseball bat and yelling, ‘You want a piece of me?'”
#31
“I have an idea for a movie called ‘The Walken Dead’ which is about a town where, instead of zombies, everyone becomes Chris Walken.”
#32
“Self-reliance is the key to a vigorous life. A man must look inward to find his own answers.”
#33
“You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you’ll win, no matter what the outcome.”
#34
“Change is not popular; we are creatures of habit as human beings. ‘I want it to be the way it was.’ But if you continue the way it was there will be no ‘is.'”
#35
“People say satire is dead. It’s not dead; it’s alive and living in the White House.”
#36
“I left school and couldn’t find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I’ve always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.”
#37
“I try to make sense of things. Which is why, I guess, I believe in destiny. There must be a reason that I am as I am. There must be.”
#38
“Sometimes over things that I did, movies that didn’t turn out very well – you go, ‘Why did you do that?’ But in the end, I can’t regret them because I met amazing people. There was always something that was worth it.”
#39
“It’s hard when you read an article saying bad things about you. It is as if someone is sticking a knife on your heart. But I am the harshest critic of my work.”
#40
“The ‘Aladdin’ thing – that’s not work; that’s just fun. Three days in the recording studio going mad, then the animators do all the work. Not a bad way to cash a large check, my friend.”
#41
“Death–to blink for an exceptionally long period of time.”
#42
“To be free. Such a thing would be greater than all the magic and all the treasures in all the world.”
#43
“Sometimes you can have a whole lifetime in a day and never notice that this is a beautiful as it gets.”
#44
“You know, some parents, when they’re angry, they get along much better when they don’t live together. They don’t fight all the time, and they can become better people, and much better mummies and daddies for you. And sometimes they get back together. And sometimes they don’t, dear. And if they don’t, don’t blame yourself. Just because they don’t love each other anymore, doesn’t mean that they don’t love you. There are all sorts of different families.”
#45
“I love kids, but they are a tough audience.”
#46
“Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death.”
#47
“Do you think God gets stoned? I think so… look at the platypus.”
#48
“There is still a lot to learn and there is always great stuff out there. Even mistakes can be wonderful.”
#49
“Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!'”
#50
“Having George W. Bush giving a lecture on business ethics is like having a leper give you a facial, it just doesn’t work!”
#51
“I’m a very tolerant man, except when it comes to holding a grudge.”
#52
“You don’t know about real loss because it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself.”
#53
“Being a famous print journalist is like being the best-dressed woman on the radio.”
#54
“What some folks call impossible is just stuff they haven’t seen before.”
#55
“The human spirit is more powerful than any drug and that is what needs to be nourished: with work, play, friendship, family. These are the things that matter.”
#56
“The bad thing about being a famous comedian is that every now and then someone approaches me to tell an old joke. Don’t tell me jokes – I have that. People also say the weirdest things, sometimes sarcastic things, and even evil things. They like to provoke to get a reaction.”
#57
“A human life is just a heartbeat in heaven.”
#58
“Marriage is a triumph of imagination over intelligence.”
#59
“The world is your oyster. Never stop trying new things.”
#60
“A lot of vets like ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ – I get great letters from guys.”
#61
“I write on big yellow legal pads – ideas in outline form when I’m doing stand-up and stuff. It’s vivid that way. I can’t type it into an iPad – I think that would put a filter into the process.”
#62
“I think it’s great when stories are dark and strange and weirdly personal.”
#63
“The world is open for play, everything and everybody is mockable in a wonderful way.”
#64
“Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some get it as a graduation gift.”
#65
“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”
#66
“Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?”
#67
“I have not thought about it, but when I die, just dance on my grave and water the plants with what you are drinking. Please do not clone me, because after a while your clone is not as bright as you are.”
#68
“Never pick a fight with an ugly person, they’ve got nothing to lose.”
#69
“Reality: What a concept!”
#70
“I do believe in love; it’s wonderful – especially love third time around, it’s even more precious; it’s kind of amazing.”
#71
“There are three things in this world that you need: Respect for all kinds of life, a nice bowel movement on a regular basis, and a navy blazer.”
#72
“What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.”
#73
“Acting is different from stand-up. It gives you this ability to enter into another character, to create another person.”
#74
“Carpe per diem – seize the check.”
#75
“A woman would never make a nuclear bomb. They would never make a weapon that kills – no, no. They’d make a weapon that makes you feel bad for a while.”
#76
“I think ‘Dead Poets’ was probably my favorite, just to get started with the idea of doing a movie that people treated as more than a movie.”
#77
“You must strive to find your own voice because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.”
#78
“It’s a wonderful feeling when your father becomes not a God but a man to you—when he comes down from the mountain and you see he’s this man with weaknesses. And you love him as this whole being, not as a figurehead.”
#79
“Divorce is expensive. I used to joke they were going to call it ‘all the money,’ but they changed it to ‘alimony.’ It’s ripping your heart out through your wallet.”
#80
“I enjoy performing for heavily armed people. It’s easier than going to Georgia.”
#81
“My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings.”
#82
“Comedy is acting out optimism.”
#83
“If Heaven exists, to know that there’s laughter, that would be a great thing.”
#84
“In America they really do mythologise people when they die.”
#85
“I don’t do well with snakes and I can’t dance.”
#86
“Nobody takes a picture of something they want to forget.”
#87
“When you look at Prince Charles, don’t you think that someone in the Royal family knew someone in the Royal family?”
#88
“Ah, yes, divorce… from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.”
#89
“Politics is so personal, vicious and immediate, how are you going to get anything done? Even the local politics where I live have gotten so ugly.”
#90
“You can start any ‘Monty Python’ routine and people finish it for you. Everyone knows it like shorthand.”
#91
“Winning an Oscar is an honor, but, between you and me, it does not makes things easier.”
#92
“There are no rules. Just follow your heart.”
#93
“For a while you get mad, then you get over it.”
#94
“You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.”
#95
“On stage you’re free. You can say and do things that if you said and did any place else, you’d be arrested.”
#96
“Cocaine is God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money.”
#97
“Cricket is basically baseball on valium.”
#98
“I loved running, but all of a sudden everything hurt so much. I started cycling when Zelda was born.”
#99
“Okra is the closest thing to nylon I’ve ever eaten. It’s like they bred cotton with a green bean. Okra, tastes like snot. The more you cook it, the more it turns into string.”
#100
“The only weapon we have is the comedy.”
#101
“I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.”
#102
“Look at the walls of Pompeii. That’s what got the internet started.”
#103
“I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was… a large Arctic region covered with ice.”
#104
“You know the difference between a tornado and divorce in the South? Nothing! Someone’s losing a trailer, number one.”
#105
“Terrible wars have been fought where millions have died for one idea–freedom. And it seems that something that means so much to so many people would be worth having.”
#106
“Tweets? That stuff kills conversation. And people taking pictures with their phone or recording you, sometimes surreptitiously, is creepy. They come up and just start talking to you, and you can see the red light on their phone.”
#107
“We had gay burglars the other night. They broke in and rearranged the furniture.”
#108
“The essential truth is that sometimes you’re worried that they’ll find out it’s a fluke, that you don’t really have it. You’ve lost the muse or – the worst dread – you never had it at all. I went through all that madness early on.”
#109
“I’ve never been asked to appear on ‘I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!,’ so I guess I mustn’t be on the professional skids just yet.”
#110
“Stand-up is the place where you can do tings that you could never do in public. Once you step on stage, you’re licensed to do that. It’s an understood relationship. You walk on stage, it’s your job. Then it’s a question of what can you get away with.”
#111
“Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party.”
#112
“If women ran the world we wouldn’t have wars, just intense negotiations every 28 days.”
#113
“For me, comedy starts as a spew, a kind of explosion, and then you sculpt it from there, if at all. It comes out of a deeper, darker side. Maybe it comes from anger, because I’m outraged by cruel absurdities, the hypocrisy that exists everywhere, even within yourself, where it’s hardest to see.”
#114
“Do I perform sometimes in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the time? No. Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah.”
#115
“I was only a leading man for a minute; now I’m a character actor.”
#116
“The improv, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but when it does, it’s like open-field running.”
#117
“Seize the day. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing.”
#118
“There’s a world out there. Open a window, and it’s there.”
#119
“Goooood Morning, Vietnam!”
#120
“Being in the same room with people and creating something together is a good thing.”
#121
“I basically started performing for my mother, going, ‘Love me!’ What drives you to perform is the need for that primal connection. When I was little, my mother was funny with me, and I started to be charming and funny for her, and I learned that by being entertaining, you make a connection with another person.”
#122
“I only ever play Vegas one night at a time. It’s a hideous, gaudy place; it may not be the end of the world per se, but you can certainly see it from there.”
#123
“My mother’s idea of natural childbirth was giving birth without makeup. She was hyper-positive – the world is a wonderful place, rainbows and unicorns. If you said anything contrary to her, you were basically exiled.”
#124
“There’s a show in America where all these people compete with ferrets, and they don’t even do anything. They basically just hold them up, and if they don’t bite you, they might win.”
#125
“You have this idea that you’d better keep working otherwise people will forget. And that was dangerous. And then you realize, no, actually if you take a break people might be more interested in you.”
#126
“When you have a great audience, you can just keep going and finding new things.”
#127
“Age makes you more confident. When you realize that it’s time now to just do things. When there’s not the pressure to perform on some level of expectations, there’s more to just explore.”
#128
“In England, if you commit a crime, the police don’t have a gun and you don’t have a gun. If you commit a crime, the police will say, ‘Stop, or I’ll say stop again.'”
#129
“The only reason Mickey Mouse has four fingers is that he can’t pick up a check.”
#130
“I loved school, maybe too much, really. I was summa cum laude in high school. I was driven that way.”
#131
“I have a difficult time doing an Irish accent; even now, it kind of fades slowly into Scottish.”
#132
“You have this idea that you’d better keep working otherwise people will forget. And that was dangerous.”
#133
“I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find. It was the pure idea of being on stage. That was the only thing that interested me, along with learning the craft and working, and just being in productions with people.”
#134
“My style is bad white-boy dancing. I can do swing a little bit, but nothing beyond that. My solo dancing is sad. I use my arms, badly.”
#135
“I bought one of the first Nintendo systems and brought that home, and we were playing ‘Legend of Zelda’ at the time, and it was addicting, and I was playing it for hours and hours and hours.”
#136
“Performing comedy in San Francisco to begin with is pretty wild. You’ve got to – you’ve got the human game preserve to play off of. And it’s a lot of great characters everywhere. You work off that, and then you play the rooms, and eventually you get to a point where you’re playing a club that is a comedy club, with other comics.”
#137
“I’m much more open to being a supporting actor right now. At the age of 60, I’ll be second fiddle. Fine. I’m happy to do it.”
#138
“In the process of looking for comedy, you have to be deeply honest. And in doing that, you’ll find out here’s the other side. You’ll be looking under the rock occasionally for the laughter.”
#139
“From the point of view of being in the public radar, comedians have less problems than other actors. Action movie stars like Stallone or Schwarzenegger usually attract the more aggressive fans.”
#140
“It’s great to play… Who wants to be deeply serious all the time? That would suck, I think. But I’m just now getting to the point where you realize, ‘Wait, you don’t have to play all the time.’ It’s exhausting, and you have to save something for when you come home. [My ex-wife] Marsha gets asked that all the time: ‘He must be really wild at home!’ The truth is that if I were, she wouldn’t be alive. That type of freneticism is insane.”
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