Best quotes by Dick Van Dyke

I found out retirement means playing golf, or I don't know what the hell it means. But to me, retirement means doing what you have fun doing.

Young people ask me for advice, and I tell them to do what I didn't do. Get some training. I took jobs that required talents I didn't have.

I had an uncle who had a car with a rumble seat, and I used to love to ride in that thing. I mentioned this to some kids, and they were like, "What are you even talking about?"

My brother and I laughed a lot as kids. We came up in the middle of the Depression, and neither one of us knew we were poor. We had nothing, but we didn't know it.

When I get some budding young comic who'll come up to me and say, 'What was it like to do it in those days?' I try to be as gracious to him as Stan Laurel was to me.

I hear music and my feet just start moving.

I can't work with my brother without laughing.

I've never been what you'd call a great singer, but I loved to sing.

There aren't many pratfalls in comedy anymore.

I would love to be Moses.

I did a 'Golden Girls' once, which shot in front of an audience, and that went well. I had a good time. But I need an audience, for comedy at least.

I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called "My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business." A publisher came to me and said write a book so I did. I wanted to call it "Everybody Else Has Got a Book."

Moses probably danced a little, right? You don't part the Red Sea without having some moves.

Haters are going to hate.

Once I got a job singing and dancing, a reasonable person might think, "Maybe I should learn how to do this." But no, I never did.

I like 'The Office.' I particularly like the British version with Ricky Gervais. Of course, I liked the 'Seinfeld' show a lot. I thought that was an awfully good show.

So I think we're kind of an alternate choice for people who have had it with sex and violence.

You know, I'm almost out of the habit of watching episodic television now.

I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!

I wanted to be a radio announcer.

Jon Stewart kills me. I love him. And Bill Maher. He does an hour on HBO. But entirely political. It is awfully rough, but he does make me laugh.

So at 16 I got a job at the local radio station. And I was working after school and weekends. I did the news; I did everything. I did - played records.

Probably one of the happiest moments, outside the birth of all of my kids, was the first time we won an Emmy, that the show won an Emmy. That was a big night.

There are people with their iPads are taking pictures so much that they're not experiencing the moment. They go home and look at the pictures later.

I have two kids who were like me, we get out of bed feeling good, and the other two would sit at the breakfast table and grumble. I think it's born into us. I usually wake up feeling pretty good. Looking forward to the day.

I turned down some movies that were quite good. mainly on the basis of taste.

One day in '61, I was looking in the Santa Monica phone book for a number, and there it was: Stan Laurel, Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I went over there and spent the afternoon with them. And pumped him with questions. I must have driven him crazy. I spent a lot of happy hours at Stan's house on Sundays just talking about comedy.

A lot of violence, a lot of gore in it, and I just didn't want to do that kind of thing.

I wasn't a falling-in-the-gutter type. I drank at home because it relaxed me. I was shy around new people, but after a drink or two, I became more sociable.

I've been talking about retiring for years. It's my standard answer to the question, 'What are your future plans?' The truth is, I'll always want to do things that are worthwhile or fun.

I worked nightclubs all through my 20s, and I was a teetotaler.

A producer came to me about doing a memoir, and at first I thought, "Well, it's a little bland." But then I realized that almost everything that's happened to me was the result of being in the right place at the right time. And I thought "Well, luck has a lot to do with it," so I wrote it from that perspective.

I was lucky to get the kinds of parts I wanted. I always said I didn't want to do anything my kids can't see.

I cannot tell you what it means when children recognize. This is about the third generation for me. And when kids that small recognize me, it really pleases me, very gratifying.

When I started having kids, I thought, 'I don't want to do anything they can't watch.'

As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.

A lot of the guilt didn't help my drinking at that point. I never expected a divorce to happen in my life particularly, but it just slowly happened. My wife was proud of me, but she hated the business, and for good reason. The spouses get moved, shoved aside, and ignored, and it's just, it's terrible.

I think, the 'Van Dyke Show' and 'Mary Poppins' are two of the best periods of my life. I had so much fun, I didn't want it to end.

'Mary Poppins' was one of the best experiences of my life.

We all know we're going to die. We're all circling the drain. Some of us are closer than others. I'm 90, I know I'm closer to the drain than most people.

I think most people will tell you that. They can go along and, while they're denying that they are addicted, say it's stress this, it's this, it's that. But I - it's - I think - I really believe there is a gene. Some people become addicted and others don't.

I never had a lot of drive, but because I had family responsibilities, I had a lot of tenacity - the tenacity of a drowning man.

'The Show' was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life.

I went from my mother to my wife. And to this day, I can't bear to be alone.

It means you never know what's going to happen,' I said. 'You do your best, then take your chances. Everything else is beyond our control.

I always loved to dance, but I never had a clue what I was doing.

I don't play golf. I have more fun singing and dancing.

I got into a Broadway show before I ever sang and danced. I learned how after I got in the show.

Put me on solid ground and I'll start tapping! At my age they say to keep moving.

I'm gonna keep singing and dancing as long as I can.

You're going to die. That's going to happen. What matters is what you do with your time before you get flushed out.

I don't have any children; I have four middle-aged people.

Only funny line I've had was my first day on the set of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. They were making me up, and I saw the director call the makeup man over, and he says "What are we going to do about the hooter?" And the makeup guy said, "I'm not a plastic surgeon." So I started that show with a big nose, and quite conscious of it.

Sing like nobody can hear you, dance like nobody can see you, and love like you've never been hurt.

I'm the anti-Quentin Tarantino.

I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business so that's literally 70 years.

Some people never change their mind through their whole lives, about anything, despite new information that comes in. And now that we know that homosexuality is not a choice, it's biological, I think we have to love and understand them.

When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.

I decided, when I started having kids, that I'd try not to do anything that I wouldn't be proud for them to see. I've kind of stuck with that, and I don't regret that at all, although I've lost money and passed up a lot of projects because of it. But I feel good about that.

People think I'm talking like I'm in perfect health, but I have all the infirmities for my age. I have arthritis and all those things. But if you keep moving, that won't bother you.

No, no, it was the relationships. That was that group. People believed that Rob and Laura were really married in real life. You know, a lot of people believed that.

Once you get the kids raised and the mortgage paid off and accomplish what you wanted to do in life, there's a great feeling of: 'Hey, I'm free as a bird.'

Emotionally I'm about 13.

I taught Sunday school when I was younger, and ended up an elder in the church, and it just seemed to me that a lot of people who went to church certainly weren't - the rest of the week - living what I would call an Christian life.

I think that's the answer to a good marriage. Everyone has their own room.

Bob Hope, like Mark Twain, had a sense of humor that was uniquely American, and like Twain, we'll likely not see another like him.

If you spend your life thinking, "I wonder if today is when it ends," you're going to miss out on everything wonderful.

I've made peace with insecurity... because there is no security of any kind.

You need someone to love, and something to do that you enjoy, and something to hope for, and that's enough for me.

Hope is life's essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning

Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I'm just going to put: 'Glad I Could Help.'

I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community.

In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.

Walt Disney and I always said we were two children looking for our inner adults.

I've got plenty of arthritis. But if you keep moving, it won't bother you that much. That's why old guys stiffen up. They forget they have to get out of their chairs and do something. You let the moss grow over, it's your own fault.