Stephen Glenn Martin (August 14, 1945) is an American comedian, actor, producer, writer, and musician. He’s received five Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Comedy Central ranked him sixth in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics in 2004.
His fame began when he was a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. He then was a frequent host on Saturday Night Live. He was one of the most popular stand-up comedians during the 1970s. He later starred in films such as The Jerk (1979), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983), All of Me (1984), ¡Three Amigos! (1986), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Roxanne (1987), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), L.A. Story (1991), Bowfinger (1999) and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003).
Below we list some words of wisdom from Steve Martin.
“Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you’ll be a mile away and have his shoes.”
“Always make room for the unexpected in yourself.”
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
“Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent.”
“I cannot smell mothballs because it’s so difficult to get their little legs apart.”
“I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.”
“All I’ve ever wanted was an honest week’s pay for an honest day’s work.”
“I am a wild and crazy guy!”
“The only thing that bothers me is if I’m in a restaurant and I’m eating and someone says, ‘Hey, mind if I smoke?’ I always say, ‘No. Mind if I fart?”
“I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.”
“Some people have a way with words, and other people…oh, uh, not have way.”
“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
“I will do anything to look like him – except, of course, exercise or eat right.”
“Teaching is, after all, a form of show business.”
“I believe the United States should allow all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language… Apache.”
“The greatest thing you can do is surprise yourself.”
“It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing.”
“I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.”
“When you’re reaching for a star, there’s a long way to fall.”
“Now let’s repeat the non-conformists’ oath: I promise to be different! I promise to be unique! I promise not to repeat things other people say! Good!”
“You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither.”
“Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!”
“I used to smoke marijuana. But I’ll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening – or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early mid-afternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . But never at dusk!”
“Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.”
“I opened the show with this line: “I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that’s tomorrow night.”
“No art comes from the conscious mind.”
“The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.”
“I could never be a woman, ’cause I’d just stay home and play with my breasts all day.”
“I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.”
“How many people have never raised their hand before?”
“Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.”
“It’s not the size of the nose that matters, it’s what’s inside that counts.”
“It’s so hard to believe in anything anymore, you know what I mean? It’s like, religion, you really can’t take it seriously, ’cause it seems so mythological, and seems so arbitrary; and then on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.”
“It’s not what you know, it’s what you think you know.”
“Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.”
“A father carries pictures where his money used to be.”
“I handed in a script last year and the studio didn’t change one word. The word they didn’t change was on page 87.”
“I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.”
“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”
“I saw the movie, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and was surprised because I didn’t see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they’re crouching and hidden.”
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