Jim Carrey Quotes

My secret is making the wrong choices. But committing completely.

Carrey: We have a president who started out when the country was together, and it had a wonderful leader and he is tearing us limb from limb. Destroying every institution. Maher: Let's talk about this Donald Trump, even though we don't want to. Let's bring it in on the panel. Carrey: He's a car salesman. He's a used car salesman. He didn't make America great again, but he did turn back the odometer.

It started early. When I saw On Golden Pond when I was a kid, I walked out of the theater and I was like "You want me to pick strawberries?" I was like, I didn't know why I was doing it. I saw myself in a shop window and I went "Wow! That's his face." But it came from the inside.

I think 9 out of 10 of the worst impulses we get though, are when we're behind the wheel of a car, you know. That's why I don't think it is a good idea to carry a gun in the glove compartment. Because chances are if it's there, sooner or later you're gonna use it. Of course again, what are you going to do if someone cuts you off on the freeway? Just let them go? You pretty much have to shoot them you know. Otherwise they won't learn nothing.

I used to get really upset when I told people where I came from, down in Los Angeles, because I always got the same response: "Canada! Wow! Must have been cold." Now I just go along with them. "Yes, Canada. It was a frozen hostile wasteland. And there was much work to be done if we were to survive the elements. After boring a hole through the ice to find food, my good friend Nantuk and I would build an igloo to protect ourselves from polar bears and flying hockey pucks. Then we would drink a lot of beer. And when Nantuk was ready, he would tell me the story of the great Moose who said to the little squirrel, Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."

These days women have heard every line there is to say. Guys, you got to get in there with something visual, and distract them. (contorted arm) Hey baby. Come here for a second. Yeah you. Come on over here. Listen uh, do you uh find it unusually windy today?

Impression: Jack Nicholson doing the joker

Impression: Clint Eastwood

Impression: Michael Landon

Impression: James Dean

Impression: Nervous breakdown

See, madness is never that far away. It's as close as saying yes to the wrong impulse.

See, madness is never that far away. It's as close as saying yes to the wrong impulse. The people who stay sane are those who can make the quick decisions. "Should I stick my fingers into the fan, or leave right now? Should I run the blade of this razor across my tongue, or just finish shaving and move away from the sink?" But you don't because luckily, most of us have that little voice inside of our head that says "uh, uh, uhhh. Turning the car into oncoming traffic is counter-productive." Imagine if we didn't have that voice. Man, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd be in the shark tank at sea world.

My father used to brag that I wasn't a ham, I was the whole pig.

I’ve often said that I wish people could realize all their dreams and wealth and fame, so that they could see that it’s not where they’re gonna find their sense of completion.

You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but all it will ever be is what's happening here, the decisions in that we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear.

I enjoy my life. The fame part of it freaked me out for a little while, and there are definitely times when it's not so great to be special and known by everybody - you know, when you're wearing the wrong thing, or just in a vulnerable place.

I don't think you can know God unless you're passionate about him so you're either screaming at him, enraptured with the idea of being around him or feeling him in your life.

They had to find one guy that hated the holiday. I do think it is odd that I have wound up playing these two iconic Christmas haters. It is the same story, in a way. Scrooge is the original Grinch. I think I am perfectly suited, because I have had some dark Christmases.

Comedic actors can be looked at as a lower form because we have to put ourselves in a lower place than most of the audience. I think lofty emotions are somehow considered more special. The best stories in the world to me are the ones that elicit a real emotion, but have humour.

One of my mission statements with all of my art has been to stop the world for people. I want to stop the worrying and stop the world.

Fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much.

My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. When I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job, and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

You might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

Risk being seen in all of your glory.

That peace that we're after, lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself. You can join the game, fight the wars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace, you have to let the armor fall.

The purpose of art is to bring people into presence.

Like many of you, I was concerned about going out into the world and doing something bigger than myself. Until someone smarter than myself made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself.

You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world.

Usually you regret the things you say no to.

I have no limits! I cannot be contained because I'm the container.

Our love is like a red, red rose... and I am a little thorny.

I started out performing as a little boy, I was trying to make my mother feel better and laugh because she was sick and in pain all the time. I found out that I had that power to relieve her.

You love the person for who they are, flaws and all. You can't help who you love, either. It comes from a different side of your brain than the logic part that tells you that this person is horrible for you - "You should walk away!" While you're walking away, the other part of your brain is trying to gain control of your bodily functions. "Turn around! She's the one!"

There is a huge difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind and an actual dog that's going to eat you.

If I'm not back in 5 minutes, just wait longer.

That's the trouble with being me. At this point, nobody gives a damn what my problem is. I could literally have a tumor on the side of my head and they'd be like, 'Yeah, big deal. I'd eat a tumor every morning for the kinda money you're pulling down.'

What I do as an art form is try to make people feel good and if I do try to make them feel bad, it's for a reason. There's something I am trying to say.

I tend to stay up late, not because I'm partying but because it's the only time of the day when I'm alone and don't have to be on, performing.

Everybody expects the fairy tale - you're going to be together forever with somebody. I don't really subscribe to that. I'd love that to happen if that happened, but ten years is enough. Ten years is a good thing with somebody, I think. It's a nice thing. A lot of good love can happen in ten years.

Sometimes in the moment I have a regret, but then I have found myself every time down the line saying to myself: "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for that so called failure."

Always turn your wheel in the direction of the skid.

Humor is not debatable. It's like sex. Either you're aroused or you're not. Nobody can reason you around to their point of view.

But for a comedian, insanity is not a problem. It's a goal.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

The highs and lows of show business is a rollercoaster for sure. There's so many highs, there's just moments of your life where you go, "Wow I can't believe how insanely lucky I am," and then you can turn around and the next moment feel so completely caught up in your own wanting, and desiring, and needing and feel like somehow you're missing something. It's just higher the high, the lower the low.

You can be zany and funny or you can do something that really has some depth to it and serious, so there's many different colors to paint with. I would hate to get trapped in one little thing. I always feel like funny is an appendage, but it is not my whole body.

I think obsessions happen because you're trying to understand something or some urge.

I got paid a lot of money at one point so the focus became, for a lot of people, about that, but for me, it's always been the same goal: To stop the world for people.

I think that there's a natural attraction to enigmatic characters, people that have decided to make a decision in their lives to live differently than everyone else. That's a very attractive quality that also happens to be good for filmmaking, people that have their own point of view and aren't looking at things the same way as everyone else.

I do really love making movies, but the thing about live performances is you don't have to wait around. Literally, we're still waiting to see what the reaction is to the film, so it's a slower process. But it is enjoyable.

The worst thing in the world when you feel broken is to have somebody coming at you with open-faced love.

I came back to this universe because I get to play a genius, which is a bit of a stretch. And you know, I bought a lot of stuff and I need the money, frankly.

It's such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

But can everyone simply choose the path he loves? Someone has to take the ordinary jobs. All I know is, that worked for me. And it didn't work for other people I know to get a so-called safe job, because there's no such thing anymore. The only thing that stays constant is the idea that people have to escape.

Ever since I started to get recognition I've picked out certain fans and reverse-stalked them.

When I started out. I'd drive a hundred miles to do my act for free.

Everything can be made fun of. The most serious things are ripe for making fun of them.

I would visualize things coming to me. It would just make me feel better. Visualization works if you work hard. That's the thing. You can't just visualize and go eat a sandwich.

Comedy is a high form of art because it brings us more joy than anything else, practically but at the same time, it doesn't get a lot of respect. That's the sacrifice you make to do it.

It's nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren't the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.

When someone you love dies, you don't lose them all at once. You lose them in pieces over time, like how the mail stops coming.

My report card always said, 'Jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students'.

I discovered a new thing in the Lord's Prayer that kind of hit me. "on earth as it is heaven" to me it means whatever you take out into the world is what you're going to draw out. like those days when you're all yang and no yin, and you're fighting with people inside, and you can't calm yourself down, and suddenly you're pulled over by the cops. everything goes wrong in the same day because you created it. so, if you get heaven within you, it'll be all around you. if hell is within you, it'll be around you. it's always created here first.

Magicians are definitely more arrogant. They're kind of like "Abra Kadabra, you're an idiot," they don't let you in on the joke. Comedians, you're always in on the joke unless it's Andy Kaufman.

Our eyes are not viewers, they're also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script, and the working title is 'I'll never be enough'

For some reason I did something where I realized I could get a reaction. That was when I broke out of my shell at school, because I really didn't have any friends or anything like that and I just kind of was going along, and then finally I did this zany thing, and all of a sudden I had tons of friends.

It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what's left?

There was a time when people said, 'Jim, if you keep on making faces, your face will freeze like that.' Now they just say, 'Pay him!'

Creative people don't behave very well generally. If you're looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you're gonna be depressed real fast.

I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, 'Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.'

I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point, you ain't interesting.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.

I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

My life is not unlike Truman's. I can't go anywhere.

I have been the guy who has everything but yet is so one-track minded about what I want, that I can't see my blessings.