Quotes by Bill Cosby

• People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on.
• Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet.
• Old is always fifteen years from now.
• Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.
• Nothing I've ever done has given me more joys and rewards than being a father to my children.
• No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.
• Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.
• Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children, my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die.
• Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.
• My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.
• Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.
• Sex education may be a good idea in the schools, but I don't believe the kids should be given homework.
• That married couples can live together day after day is a miracle that the Vatican has overlooked.
• The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic.
• The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods.
• The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.
• The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.
• The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.
• There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right.
• Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge.
• There is hope for the future because God has a sense of humor and we are funny to God.
• Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.
• It isn't a matter of black is beautiful as much as it is white is not all that's beautiful.
• A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he's in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.
• A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.
• Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.
• Any man today who returns from work, sinks into a chair, and calls for his pipe is a man with an appetite for danger.
• As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by "survival of the fittest."
• Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.
• Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.
• Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.
• Gray hair is God's graffiti.
• I guess the real reason that my wife and I had children is the same reason that Napoleon had for invading Russia: it seemed like a good idea at the time.
• In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
• Immortality is a long shot, I admit. But somebody has to be first.
• Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you're telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.
• I wasn't always black... there was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.
• Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.
• I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
• I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.
• I am certainly not an authority on love because there are no authorities on love, just those who've had luck with it and those who haven't.
• Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.
• When you become senile, you won't know it.
• You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who've never had any.
• You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
• He who climbs a ladder must begin at the bottom