Steven Wright is a distinctive American comedian renowned for his deadpan delivery, surreal humor, and offbeat observations. Rising to fame in the 1980s, Wright’s minimalist style and monotone voice set him apart in the comedy landscape. He became known for his one-liners, often filled with absurdity and wordplay, delivered with impeccable timing and a detached demeanor. Wright’s comedy explores the peculiarities of everyday life, often diving into existential ponderings and absurd scenarios with a unique perspective. His dry wit and understated delivery have earned him critical acclaim and a dedicated fanbase. Wright’s influence extends beyond stand-up comedy, as he’s also worked in film and television, further showcasing his quirky humor and distinctive persona. Throughout his career, he has maintained a cult following and continues to be celebrated for his originality and unconventional approach to comedy.
Steven Wright Quotes
1. “If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.”
— Steven Wright
2. “I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.”
— Steven Wright
3. “If at first you don’t succeed then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.”
— Steven Wright
4. “Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.”
— Steven Wright
5. “Support bacteria – they’re the only culture some people have.”
— Steven Wright
6. “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
— Steven Wright
7. “To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.”
— Steven Wright
8. “If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.”
— Steven Wright
9. “If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?”
— Steven Wright
10. “43.7 per cent of all statistics are made up on the spot.”
— Steven Wright
11. “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”
— Steven Wright
12. “Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.”
— Steven Wright
13. “I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
— Steven Wright
14. “Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.”
— Steven Wright
15. “Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.”
— Steven Wright
16. “When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.”
— Steven Wright
17. “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
— Steven Wright
18. “I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.”
— Steven Wright
19. “It’s like the Wild West, the Internet. There are no rules.”
— Steven Wright
20. “Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.”
— Steven Wright
21. “Light travels faster than sound. Isn’t that why people appear bright before you hear them speak?”
— Steven Wright
22. “Five out of four people have trouble with fractions.”
— Steven Wright
23. “Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.”
— Steven Wright
24. “If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?”
— Steven Wright
25. “The speed of time is one second per second.”
— Steven Wright
26. “I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.”
— Steven Wright
27. “If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.”
— Steven Wright
28. “If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?”
— Steven Wright
29. “I have an inferiority complex, but it’s not a very good one.”
— Steven Wright
30. “I have a large sea shell collection which I keep scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen it.”
— Steven Wright
31. “You know when you’re sitting on a chair and you lean back so you’re just on two legs and you lean too far so you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time…”
— Steven Wright
32. “How come abbreviated is such a long word?”
— Steven Wright
33. “I have a paper cut from writing my suicide note. It’s a start…”
— Steven Wright
34. “I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.”
— Steven Wright
35. “I went to a general store but they wouldn’t let me buy anything specific.”
— Steven Wright
36. “No one is listening until you make a mistake.”
— Steven Wright
37. “What’s another word for Thesaurus?”
— Steven Wright
38. “On the other hand, you have different fingers.”
— Steven Wright
39. “Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.”
— Steven Wright
40. “I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.”
— Steven Wright
41. “I heard that in relativity theory, space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings.”
— Steven Wright
42. “OK, so what’s the speed of dark?”
— Steven Wright
43. “The sun never sets on the British Empire. But it rises every morning. The sky must get awfully crowded.”
— Steven Wright
44. “Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.”
— Steven Wright
45. “If it’s a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.”
— Steven Wright
46. “Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard? Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?”
— Steven Wright
47. “Why is it, when a door is open it’s ajar, but when a jar is open, it’s not a door?”
— Steven Wright
48. “There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.”
— Steven Wright
49. “Everyone has a photographic Memory, some just don’t have film.”
— Steven Wright
50. “I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.”
— Steven Wright
51. “I wish the first word I ever said was the word quote, so right before I die I could say unquote.”
— Steven Wright
52. “I Xeroxed a mirror. Now I have an extra Xerox machine.”
— Steven Wright
53. “My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.”
— Steven Wright
54. “The best kind of friend is the kind you sit with, never say a word and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had.”
— Steven Wright
55. “When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.”
— Steven Wright
56. “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.”
— Steven Wright
57. “If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?”
— Steven Wright
58. “Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.”
— Steven Wright
59. “Half the people you know are below average.”
— Steven Wright
60. “Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.”
— Steven Wright
61. “I have an existential map. It has ‘You are here’ written all over it.”
— Steven Wright
62. “I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.”
— Steven Wright
63. “I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.”
— Steven Wright
64. “Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?”
— Steven Wright
65. “99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.”
— Steven Wright
66. “It doesn’t matter what temperature the room is, it’s always room temperature.”
— Steven Wright
67. “Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?”
— Steven Wright
68. “Why do scientists call it research when looking for something new?”
— Steven Wright
69. “Does fuzzy logic tickle?”
— Steven Wright
70. “It is like putting a dehumidifier and a humidifier in the same room and letting them fight it out.”
— Steven Wright
71. “I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.”
— Steven Wright
72. “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, do the other trees make fun of it?”
— Steven Wright
73. “The other night I came home late, and tried to unlock my house with my car keys. I started the house up. So, I drove it around for a while. I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over. He asked where I lived. I said, “Right here, officer.””
— Steven Wright
74. “I hooked up my accelerator pedal in my car to my brake lights. I hit the gas, people behind me stop, and I’m gone.”
— Steven Wright
75. “I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”
— Steven Wright
76. “I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”
— Steven Wright
77. “I got a new dog. He’s a paranoid retriever. He brings back everything because he’s not sure what I threw him.”
— Steven Wright
78. “What a nice night for an evening.”
— Steven Wright
79. “In school, every period ends with a bell. Every sentence ends with a period. Every crime ends with a sentence.”
— Steven Wright
80. “A fool and his money are soon partying.”
— Steven Wright
81. “Smoking cures weight problems, eventually.”
— Steven Wright
82. “I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.”
— Steven Wright
83. “If heat rises, then heaven must be hotter than hell.”
— Steven Wright
84. “My dental hygienist is cute. Every time I visit, I eat a whole package of Oreo cookies while waiting in the lobby. Sometimes she has to cancel the rest of the afternoon’s appointments.”
— Steven Wright
85. “I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don’t know what to feed it.”
— Steven Wright
86. “I took a lie detector test the other day. No, I didn’t.”
— Steven Wright
87. “Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.”
— Steven Wright
88. “When I was in school the teachers told me practice makes perfect; then they told me nobody’s perfect so I stopped practicing.”
— Steven Wright
89. “If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?”
— Steven Wright
90. “My nephew has HDADHD. High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention, but when he does it’s unbelievably clear.”
— Steven Wright
91. “If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?”
— Steven Wright
92. “How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn’t live there?”
— Steven Wright
93. “I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window.”
— Steven Wright
94. “All those who believe in psychokinesis – raise my hand.”
— Steven Wright
95. “I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.”
— Steven Wright
96. “I just got this new camera. It’s very advanced – you don’t even need it.”
— Steven Wright
97. “My friend Sally is a nudist. I went to her house. The closets have no doors. The walls are covered with see-through wallpaper.”
— Steven Wright
98. “If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?”
— Steven Wright
99. “Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.”
— Steven Wright
100. “I went to the hardware store to buy some batteries, but they weren’t included, so I had to buy them again.”
— Steven Wright
101. “If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?”
— Steven Wright
102. “I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart.”
— Steven Wright
103. “How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?”
— Steven Wright
104. “Why are there five syllables in the word “monosyllabic”?”
— Steven Wright
105. “It was the first time I was ever in love, and I learned a lot. Before that I’d never even thought about killing myself.”
— Steven Wright
106. “Why isn’t the word “phonetically” spelled with an “f”?”
— Steven Wright
107. “My socks DO match. They’re the same thickness.”
— Steven Wright
108. “What happens if you get scared half to death twice?”
— Steven Wright
109. “Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen.”
— Steven Wright
110. “Some friends of mine got me a sweater for my birthday. I’d have preferred a moaner or a screamer, but the sweater was OK.”
— Steven Wright
111. “I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.”
— Steven Wright
112. “I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.”
— Steven Wright
113. “Black holes result from God dividing the universe by zero.”
— Steven Wright
114. “When I was in boy scouts, I slipped on the ice and hurt my ankle. A little old lady had to help me across the street.”
— Steven Wright
115. “Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts.”
— Steven Wright
116. “I bought a house on a one-way dead-end road. I don’t know how I got there.”
— Steven Wright
117. “A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.”
— Steven Wright
118. “I tried to hang myself with a bungee cord. I kept almost dying.”
— Steven Wright
119. “There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.”
— Steven Wright
120. “You know how it is when you’re walking up the stairs, and you get to the top, and you think there’s one more step? I’m like that all the time.”
— Steven Wright
121. “I’m a peripheral visionary.”
— Steven Wright
122. “I met this wonderful girl at Macy’s. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.”
— Steven Wright
123. “Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.”
— Steven Wright
124. “If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?”
— Steven Wright
125. “I’m addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn’t matter.”
— Steven Wright
126. “I washed a sock. Then I put it in the dryer. When I took it out, it was gone.”
— Steven Wright
127. “I got this powdered water – now I don’t know what to add.”
— Steven Wright
128. “They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.”
— Steven Wright
129. “I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.’”
— Steven Wright
130. “Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.”
— Steven Wright
131. “I’m a psychic amnesiac. I know in advance what I’ll forget.”
— Steven Wright
132. “I was thinking that women should put pictures of missing husbands on beer cans.”
— Steven Wright
133. “Why do they sterilize needles for lethal injections?”
— Steven Wright
134. “The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.”
— Steven Wright
135. “If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?”
— Steven Wright
136. “If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?”
— Steven Wright
137. “In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.”
— Steven Wright
138. “What would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?”
— Steven Wright
139. “I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.”
— Steven Wright
140. “Why isn’t the number 11 pronounced onety one?”
— Steven Wright
141. “The Bermuda Triangle got tired of warm weather. It moved to Alaska. Now Santa Claus is missing.”
— Steven Wright
142. “If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren’t people from Holland called Holes?”
— Steven Wright
143. “For my sister’s 50th birthday, I sent her a singing mammogram.”
— Steven Wright
144. “I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights, so it looks like I’m the only one moving.”
— Steven Wright
145. “Do Roman paramedics refer to IV’s as ’4’s??”
— Steven Wright
146. “I’m moving to Mars next week, so if you have any boxes…”
— Steven Wright
147. “When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.”
— Steven Wright
148. “Do you have any toy train schedules?”
— Steven Wright
149. “Always try to be modest, and be proud of it!”
— Steven Wright
150. “Winny and I lived in a house that ran on static electricity. If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your head. If you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick.”
— Steven Wright
