Bill Cosby Quotes (115 Quotes)


    If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.

    For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.

    Never say to younger people that was before your time, because the last full moon was before their time

    Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.

    When the child is twelve, your wife buys her a splendidly silly article of clothing called a training bra. To train what I never had a training jock. And believe me, when I played football, I could have used a training jock more than any twelve-year-old needs a training bra.


    Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children, my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die.

    Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.

    Children today know more about sex than I or my father did.

    And it's wonderful to follow Clair and Cliff and their lives being successful, doing what they always dreamt of doing and then to have these miracles which turn out to be so miraculous and then become grandparents. And to see one daughter become married to a fellow who's sort of a caretaker or a janitor, and watch another marry someone who already has a child it's wonderful to watch a family do that, and maintain.

    I feel that in-person contact with people is the most important thing in comedy. While I'm up on stage, I can actually put myself into the audience and adjust my pace and tuning to them. I can get into their heads through their ears and through their eyes. Only through this total communication can I really achieve what I'm trying to do.

    Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet.

    You can't really argue with a guy who says that. But you also have to play the tape back where he looks at the man in charge and says, 'You're doing a heck of a job,' and neither one of them knows what they're talking about.

    And to those people with no children but who think they'd like to have them some day to fulfill their lives. Remember With fulfillment comes responsibility.

    We go out of our way to make people so different, ... to punish them because of color, because of sex, because of size, and the game starts.

    The master bedroom is just the beginning of the problems. There is no master in the bedroom. She starts to give you things, This is your closet. You'll act like a stranger and thank her.

    Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

    Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge.

    Anyone can dabble, but once you've made that commitment, your blood has that particular thing in it, and it's very hard for people to stop you.

    My wife and I have five children the reason we have five children is because we do not want six

    In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck -- and, of course, courage.

    They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk Why you ain't, Where you is . . . I blamed the kid, until I heard the mother talk. . . . And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's import

    Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.

    I'm here for a friend. I brought a couple of boxes of chocolate Jell-O.

    Fathers are the geniuses of the house because only a person as intelligent as we could fake such stupidity. Think about your father He doesn't know where anything is. You ask him to do something, he messes it up and your mother sends you go down and see what your father's doing before he blows up the house. He's a genius at work because he doesn't want to do it, and he knows someone will be coming soon to stop him.

    Some authority on parenting once said, Hold them very close and then let them go. This is the hardest truth for a father to learn that his children are continuously growing up and moving away from him (until, of course, they move back in).

    The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic.

    These people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.

    I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

    Parents are not quite interested in justice, they are interested in quiet.

    Nothing I've ever done has given me more joys and rewards than being a father to my children.

    I wasn't always black... there was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.

    I recently turned fifty, which is young for a tree, midlife for an elephant, and ancient for a quarter miler, who's son now says, Dad, I just can't run the quarter with you anymore unless I bring something to read.

    My eleven year old daughter mopes around the house all day waiting for her breasts to grow.

    The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods.

    Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on.

    That married couples can live together day after day is a miracle that the Vatican has overlooked.

    The summit, which is set up to educate people about managing their money and protecting their income, leads to empowerment of self, for which this summit needs to be applauded.

    Fatherhood is asking your son to make up a name rather than tell anybody who he is.

    I asked her to dance and we did. Then I asked for her phone number and wanted to see her,

    Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you're telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.

    The incarcerated These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, saying, The cops shouldn't have shot him. What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand

    What is it about grandparents that is so lovely I'd like to say that grandparents are God's gifts to children. And if they can but see, hear and feel what these people have to give, they can mature at a fast rate.

    This was a threat being carried out -- 40 million for 22 years, ... I've watched these people, paying them, answering their wants and needs. This was a real threat, and I wanted her mother to know what she was doing.

    betrayal, abandonment, deceit and manipulation.

    You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

    I was told maybe nine years ago by an executive who was working for a major network that the networks from now on are going to be entertaining 13-year-old people, and that's what you see today.

    about these magical people with no jobs who live in apartments.

    Immortality is a long shot, I admit. But somebody has to be first.

    I guess the real reason that my wife and I had children is the same reason that Napoleon had for invading Russia: it seemed like a good idea at the time.

    My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.


    More Bill Cosby Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Children - Fathers - People - Parents - Man - Jokes & Humor - Time - Education - Laughter - Love - Parenting - Future - Wisdom & Knowledge - Marriage - God - Facts - Justice - Failure - Work & Career - View All Bill Cosby Quotations

    Related Authors


    Tina Fey - Mike Myers - Ellen DeGeneres - David Letterman - Chris Rock - Rowan Atkinson - Rosie ODonnell - Johnny Carson - Dan Aykroyd - Chevy Chase


Page 1 of 3 1 2 3

Authors (by First Name)

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M
N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z

Other Inspiring Sections