Norm MacDonald, born on October 17, 1959, was an esteemed Canadian comedian, actor and writer recognized for his deadpan comedic style.
Raised in an English-speaking household in Quebec City, he started his career in stand-up comedy, eventually becoming a prominent cast member on Saturday Night Live.
MacDonald was renowned for his impressions of cultural icons like Burt Reynolds, David Letterman and Larry King.
Besides SNL, he was a fixture in various films and TV shows, such as Billy Madison, The Drew Carey Show and The Middle.
Between 2013 and 2018, he hosted Norm Macdonald Live and Norm Macdonald Has a Show, where he interviewed celebrities.
Related: Dane Cook Quotes, Sayings, Jokes and One Liners and Groucho Marx Quotes
He also penned a heavily fictionalized novel about his life, “Based on a True Story,” in 2016.
MacDonald, who passed away from undisclosed leukemia in 2021, is remembered as one of his generation’s greatest comedians and an exemplary talk show guest.
Let’s go through the quotes by Norm MacDonald.
Best Norm MacDonald Quotes
If you cannot patiently bear correction, endeavor to avoid fault. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The beginning of wisdom is the knowledge of folly. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Jealousy seldom punishes with the severity it suffers. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Note to self: no matter how bad life gets, there’s always beer. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Violent people usually express their love of a thing by their hatred of its opposite. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Chastity is oftener owing to diffidence and shame, than to fortitude of reason or virtue. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The soul is never perfectly secure from the influence of passion; the occasional tranquility she seems to enjoy, is rather relaxation than imperturbable triumph. ~ Norm MacDonald.
A lot of writers come from Harvard and such, and are rich, and they write under the misapprehension that poor people are stupid. So when they do write them, they are hillbillies or rednecks or Christian idiots. ~ Norm MacDonald.
If you’re watching a comedian on television and he’s making a political point, I would say he’s gotten too serious. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I like doing a funny show where I don’t have to act and fall in love with a girl. ~ Norm MacDonald.
A lot of people think I’m difficult to work with. It’s not like I really want to do that much stuff, so it doesn’t really matter. I guess I’m somewhat difficult when it comes to comedy. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Funny Norm MacDonald Quotes
Liberty, like health, appears most precious when lost. ~ Norm MacDonald.
My dad had this thing – everyone in Canada wants to play hockey; that’s all they want to do. So when I was a kid, whenever we skated my dad would not let us on the ice without hockey sticks, because of this insane fear we would become figure skaters! ~ Norm MacDonald.
We would seldom be deceived by flattery, did our own conceit not promote the delusion. ~ Norm MacDonald.
It is the folly of weak-minded people, to imagine they are what flattery or conceit represents them; and that it is useless for them to be what they are not, since they seem already to have acquired the reputation of it. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The reason we have few friends in adversity, is, because we have no true ones in prosperity. ~ Norm MacDonald.
We advise others better than ourselves. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Whenever I do theaters, I don’t like ’em. I don’t think they’re right for stand-up. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I would love to stay at SNL forever. But you can’t stay in the same place. People think you’re a loser. ~ Norm MacDonald.
A capacity for hating the object of desire is, perhaps, the best cure for love in cases of disappointment. ~ Norm MacDonald.
In estimating the adversities of life, we would seldom have much reason to complain of the evils we suffer, did we understand the dangers we daily escape. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I remember a psychiatrist once telling me that I gamble in order to escape the reality of life, and I told him that’s why everyone does everything. ~ Norm Macdonald.
In math, you could get 100 percent. It was very fair. That’s what I liked about math. You could figure it out, and the teacher couldn’t have a stupid opinion about it. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Witty Norm MacDonald Quotes
The joy a person is usually seen to express at the conversion of another to his opinion is seldom more than the impulse of egotistical satisfaction at being considered worthy of didactic imitation. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Flattery succeeds best on minds previously occupied by conceit. ~ Norm MacDonald.
None seem to bear the imputation of supposed guilt with greater intolerance than such as are, on other occasions, obviously culpable of vice or crime. ~ Norm MacDonald.
In love, we are best pleased when we please others. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Enjoyment inflames love in some men, and extinguishes it in others: the wind that assists large vessels, upsets small ones. ~ Norm MacDonald.
RIP Amy Winehouse. We lost a true heroin addict today. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The man that does not fear punishment, little regards crime. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Your worst and most dangerous enemy is the person that injures you under the pretensions of friendship. ~ Norm MacDonald.
They say that if you’re afraid of homosexuals, it means that deep down inside you’re actually a homosexual yourself. That worries me because I’m afraid of dogs. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Ignorance is better than knowledge misapplied. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Reason is always weak where prejudice is strong. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Were there no fools, there would be no flatterers. ~ Norm MacDonald.
After months of speculation, the sitcom star Ellen DeGeneres admitted that yes, she’s gay. Inspired by her courage, today, diet-guru Richard Simmons admitted that he is really, really, really, really gay. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Hilarious Norm MacDonald Quotes
Envy, like a false mirror, distorts the symmetry of the sweetest form. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The Rolling Stones reunited for a twenty-fifth anniversary tour last week. Keith Richards said that he’s happy to continue to do what he’s been doing for the past twenty-five years: cheating death. ~ Norm MacDonald.
There are two things which a man should scrupulously avoid: giving advice that he would not follow, and asking advice when he is determined to pursue his own opinion. ~ Norm MacDonald.
There are two things at which most men are grieved: when their faults are exposed, and when their virtues are concealed. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Instead of loving your enemies, have no enemies to love. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Few people love with the violence they hate. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I could not ignore their withering glances. They looked at me the way real vampires look at Count Chocula. ~ Norm Macdonald.
The first principle of solid wisdom is discretion, without it all the erudition of life is merely bagatelle. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Comedy is surprises, so if you’re intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh, that’s funny. ~ Norm MacDonald.
During misfortunes, nothing aggravates our condition more, than to be esteemed deserving of them. ~ Norm MacDonald.
It is better to be idle than employed in ill. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Funniest Norm MacDonald Quotes
It is often better to be restricted to necessity than unconfined in the measure of our desires: prosperity destroys more individuals than adversity ruins. ~ Norm MacDonald.
All my life’s about is cracking up people and them cracking me up and trying not to think about dying. That doesn’t cost very much money. ~ Norm MacDonald.
We often suffer more from our fears, than from the dangers of our situation. ~ Norm MacDonald.
You can’t love your team without hating another team. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I don’t really like politics that much. And I like the order and simplicity of sports. They have an ending. You can argue with your friends about it, but in the end you still like sports. I almost love the fantasy world of sports more than the real world. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Few are more unhappy than those who have great ambition, but little energy to urge it into activity. ~ Norm MacDonald.
He that searches for praise will often find contempt. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Humorous Norm MacDonald Quotes
We are often less grieved at disappointments than at ourselves for having said much concerning the certainty of our expectations. ~ Norm MacDonald.
With the ambitious, the failure of one expedient is the suggestion of another; but with the irresolute, defeat usually occasions abandonment of purpose. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I’ve just seen really, really funny guys, and if I didn’t know them, I wouldn’t know they were funny from the television. I don’t know what it does, it just sucks it away. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Few criminals die sensible of their crimes. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punchline were identical. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Love is an artful arrangement of artless pretensions, whereby we labor to appear innocent in what we desire to be most cunning. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Most men will go farther to give advice than to follow their own opinion. ~ Norm MacDonald.
My dad died, and my grandfather died, and my great-grandfather died. And the guy before him, I don’t know. Probably died. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I’m a huge sports fan but have no interest in minutiae. I don’t remember who won Super Bowls five years ago or listen to sports talk radio. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I’m thankful for women. I think women are more intelligent than men. Also, without women, there would be no cookies. ~ Norm MacDonald.
If you’re looking for the suspect in a suicide bombing, here’s a clue: Look for the dead guy. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Popular Norm MacDonald Quotes
I’m not gay, so I don’t know much about Broadway musicals. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I never had any interest in sitcoms or motion pictures or anything like that. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The young compliment their greatness on the number of their friends; the old, on the confidence of them. ~ Norm MacDonald.
It is necessary to be tolerant, in order to be tolerated. ~ Norm MacDonald.
If you desire praise or esteem, endeavor to merit it. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Death is a funny thing. Not funny haha, like a Woody Allen movie, but funny strange, like a Woody Allen marriage. ~ Norm Macdonald.
There’s no such thing, of course, as an old-fashioned gay guy. They’re the most decadent people. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Proper respect to others is the most prudent rule of directing the measure of reverence due to ourselves. ~ Norm MacDonald.
It got very tedious saying the same jokes in the same way with the same attitude. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Imprudent restrictions often force youth farther than enticement would carry them; and careless limitation is frequently worse than no injunction. ~ Norm MacDonald.
This would have been a great game to watch if we didn’t have any money on it. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The standard of morals is as variable as morals themselves; of which every nation has a different code, and every custom a different reading. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The only time having a cult following is a great thing is when you are actually in a cult. ~ Norm MacDonald.
They that are fated to be fools, have one consolation, that they are fated also to be ignorant of it. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Top Norm MacDonald Quotes
I don’t know the difference between a hippie and a hipster but, it’s fun to watch either one of them get beat up. ~ Norm MacDonald.
There is a very prevalent tenet with youth, that good company is everything desirable, and that bad is even better than none. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Hypocrisy is the outward acknowledgment of inward shame. ~ Norm MacDonald.
The praise we seek for our own virtues sometimes tempts us to flatter the imperfections of other men. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Yeah man, they call gambling a disease, but it’s the only disease where you can win a bunch of money. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Education makes some men wiser, others more ridiculous and foolish! ~ Norm MacDonald.
As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to. ~ Norm Macdonald.
Never raise expectations in others that you cannot realize: promise is less pleasing than disappointment is vexatious. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I don’t know anything about politics. I wouldn’t put too much into my prediction on politics. ~ Norm MacDonald.
I started on ‘Saturday Night Live’ the same time Conan started on Late Night. We just had a relationship because I would be upstairs in the studio and whenever he couldn’t get a guest – which was often back then since he was just starting out – he would just call me down to be a guest. ~ Norm MacDonald.
When I was a kid, everybody that played golf was an old man. Until Tiger showed up, they weren’t in very good shape. ~ Norm MacDonald.
When I hear a guy lost a battle to cancer, that really did bother me, that that’s a term. It implies that he failed and that somebody else that defeated cancer is heroic and courageous. ~ Norm MacDonald.
It is easier to hate those we love, than love those whom we have hated. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Famous Norm MacDonald Quotes
The most frequent cause of regret for what we have done is because its effects interfere with what we would do. ~ Norm MacDonald.
You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him. ~ Norm MacDonald.
In terms of merit, sports has mathematical statistics. That’s how you know who the best player is. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Scientists believe they may have discovered a primitive form of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. That primitive form of life? You guessed it, Frank Stallone. ~ Norm MacDonald.
Kenny G has a Christmas album out this year. Hey, happy birthday Jesus! Hope you like crap! ~ Norm MacDonald.
So these were 97 top Norm MacDonald quotes, jokes, one liners and sayings.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Patton Oswalt quotes and Bob Hope quotes.
