A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
– Fred Allen
A gentleman is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.
– Fred Allen
A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 am and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 p.m. to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.
– Fred Allen
An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.
– Fred Allen
An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.
– Fred Allen
Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne - sounds like a trunk falling down a flight of stairs.
– Fred Allen
California is a fine place to live - if you happen to be an orange.
– Fred Allen
Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
– Fred Allen
Everywhere outside New York City is Bridgeport, Connecticut.
– Fred Allen
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
– Fred Allen
He dreamed he was eating shredded wheat and woke up to find the mattress half gone.
– Fred Allen
Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.
– Fred Allen
I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can't remember what the third thing is.
– Fred Allen
I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
– Fred Allen
I don't have to look up my family tree, because I know that I'm the sap.
– Fred Allen
I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin.
– Fred Allen
I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back.
– Fred Allen
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal labotomy.
– Fred Allen
I'm a little hoarse tonight. I've been living in Chicago for the past two months, and you know how it is, yelling for help on the way home every night. Things are so tough in Chicago that at Easter time, for bunnies the little kids use porcupines.
– Fred Allen
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
– Fred Allen
It is probably not love that makes the world go around, but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners recognize their dependence on each other for the achievement of shared and private goals.
– Fred Allen
Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.
– Fred Allen
Some movie stars wear their sunglasses even in church. They're afraid God might recognize them and ask for autographs.
– Fred Allen
Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything.
– Fred Allen
The advertising world had space men in it before spacemen existed.
– Fred Allen
The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.
– Fred Allen
The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.
– Fred Allen
The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion.
– Fred Allen
The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand.
– Fred Allen
The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference.
– Fred Allen
Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.
– Fred Allen
Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.
– Fred Allen
We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.
– Fred Allen
What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement?
– Fred Allen
When a radio comedian's program is finally finished it slinks down Memory Lane into the limbo of yesteryear's happy hours. All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.
– Fred Allen
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
– Fred Allen
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.
– Fred Allen
You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.
– Fred Allen
[Television is] the triumph of machine over people.
– Fred Allen
I have just returned from Boston. It is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there.
– Fred Allen
Television is a new medium. It's called a medium because nothing is well-done.
– Fred Allen
My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense.
– Fred Allen
Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.
– Fred Allen
An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.
– Fred Allen
All I know about humor is that I don't know anything about it.