Leo Rosten quotes

Extremists think "communication" means agreeing with them. (Leo Rosten)
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
Leo Rosten
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.
Leo Rosten
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
Leo Rosten
We see things as we are, not as they are.
Leo Rosten
Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.
Leo Rosten
I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.
Leo Rosten
Courage is the capacity to confirm what can be imagined.
Leo Rosten
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.
Leo Rosten
If you are going to do something wrong at least enjoy it.
Leo Rosten
Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable. (Leo Rosten)
What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring].
Leo Rosten
Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.
Leo Rosten
Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
Leo Rosten
First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.
Leo Rosten
Satire is focused bitterness.
Leo Rosten
Why did God give me two ears and one mouth? So that I will hear more and talk less.
Leo Rosten
Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
Leo Rosten
The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.
Leo Rosten
If at first you don't succeed, before you try again, stop to figure out what you did wrong.
Leo Rosten
O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales. (Leo Rosten)
Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
Leo Rosten
Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers.
Leo Rosten
Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.
Leo Rosten
For some not to be martyrs is martyrdom indeed.
Leo Rosten