The fundamental difference between the mystery story and the ghost story is the fact that a mystery demands a solution for its effectiveness; a ghost story is necessarily unsolvable; the reader must be willing to accept the fact that nothing is proved.

— Bennett Cerf

Bennett Cerf Quotes

Banquet: a plate of cold, hairy chicken and artificially coloured green peas completely surrounded by dreary speeches and appeals for donations.

— Bennett Cerf

For me, a hearty “belly laugh” is one of the beautiful sounds in the world.

— Bennett Cerf

Fame – anyone who says he doesn’t like it is crazy.

— Bennett Cerf

Censor: A self-appointed snoophound who sticks his nose in other people’s business.

— Bennett Cerf

Middle age is when your old classmates are so grey and wrinkled and bald they don’t recognize you.

— Bennett Cerf

Politicians are like ships: noisiest when lost in a fog.

— Bennett Cerf

Television, I love it, everything that happened before television lumped together, never caused folks to turn on a street to stare at me, or waitresses to ask for autographs.

— Bennett Cerf

The fact that we don’t read more books in America can be traced squarely to the fact that we have newspapers that are about a hundred times as big as the newspapers anywhere else.

— Bennett Cerf

The fundamental difference between the mystery story and the ghost story is the fact that a mystery demands a solution for its effectiveness; a ghost story is necessarily unsolvable; the reader must be willing to accept the fact that nothing is proved.

— Bennett Cerf

There is a mass of people, we might as well admit, who if they weren’t watching television, would be doing absolutely nothing else.

— Bennett Cerf

TV’s sameness has destroyed many things, such as the American urge toward independent thought.

— Bennett Cerf

One of the greatest threats facing book publishing, and the entire country for that matter, is censorship.

— Bennett Cerf

Most of the things that are supposed to be so objectionable in books are things that every teenager, in the United States, not only knows, but has talked about at length in school, or on the way home from school.

— Bennett Cerf

I think the right to read, is one of our inherent rights, and I think that people in America today are intelligent enough to decide for themselves what they want to read. Without being told, by self-appointed people, you must not read this, or you cannot read this.

— Bennett Cerf

I think it’s become fashionable for the snobbish egghead today to make fun of television. I’ve heard many people, boast, “I would never have a television set in my house,” well, these people are fools.

— Bennett Cerf

Fun

I can’t say this too often – that a little humor can make life worth living. That has always been my credo. Somebody once asked me, ‘What would you like your epitaph to be?’ I’ve always said that I’d like it to be: He left people a little happier than they were when he came into the room.

— Bennett Cerf

Oratory is the art of making a loud noise sound like a deep thought.

— Bennett Cerf

There once was a student named Bessor Whose knowledge grew lessor and lessor. It at last grew so small He knew nothing at all, And today he’s a college professor!

— Bennett Cerf

The Atomic Age is here to stay – but are we?

— Bennett Cerf

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire, then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized, anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer -and if so, why?

— Bennett Cerf

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