John Florence Sullivan (1894–1956,) known professionally as Fred Allen, was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically-pointed radio program The Fred Allen Show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the Golden Age of American radio. His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny.
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Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Business
An income tax form is like a laundry list-either way you lose your shirt.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Taxes
I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and—I can’t remember what the third thing is.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Memory
A gentleman is any man who wouldn’t hit a woman with his hat on.
—Fred Allen
The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Religion, Churches
Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.
—Fred Allen
Topics: City Life, Cities
Television is a device that permits people who haven’t anything to do to watch people who can’t do anything.
—Fred Allen
An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Hollywood
All I know about humor is that I don’t know anything about it.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Ignorance
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
Topics: Christians, Christianity
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
Topics: Help, Cooperation
The last time I saw him he was walking down lover’s lane holding his own hand.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Pride
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
An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Advertising
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
Condensed milk is wonderful. I don’t see how they can get a cow to sit down on those little cans.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Eating
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
Topics: Comedy
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Hollywood
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
Topics: Americans, Tourism, Travel
I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Exercise
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Television, Imitation
Some movie stars wear their sunglasses even in church. They’re afraid God might recognize them and ask for autographs.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Pride
I don’t have to look up my family tree, because I know that I’m the sap.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Ancestors, Ancestry, Family
Committee—a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Committees, Togetherness
Television is the triumph of machine over people.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Television
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
Topics: Fame
I’d rather have two girls at seventeen than one at thirty-four.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Women
The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.
—Fred Allen
Topics: City Life, Cities
Cocktail party: A gathering held to enable forty people to talk about themselves at the same time. The man who remains after the liquor is gone is the host.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Party
The world is a grindstone and life is your nose.
—Fred Allen
Topics: Life
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