Quotes

I've retired so many times now it's getting to be a habit.

I remember in the book that Caractacus was married. There was no love interest, no love story. So I think bringing Truly Scrumptious in works very well because we had assumed he was a widower. And they couldn't have picked a better Truly Scrumptious than Sally [Sally Ann Howes]. They came up with Sally Ann and I heard her voice, and it was the richest contralto. She auditioned with "The Lovely Lonely Man" and I thought, "My God, this girl is great!" and then she was stunningly beautiful. She loved those kids and they loved her, which I think comes across on the screen. They just thought a great deal of her and she spent a lot of time with them, you know, between shots - telling stories and playing games during all those long waiting periods.

I never wanted to be an actor and to this day I don't. I can't get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.

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

In the best of all worlds the producers would take some responsibility for the kinds of things they're putting out. Unfortunately, they don't. And then I-- they keep saying we can't have our First Amendment rights abridged and we can't have censorship. Well we had it back in the Hays days [Production Code Administration, headed by 'Will H. Hays', the official Hollywood censor office], in the Johnson office days. And I think they should--maybe the American people might bring it back if things get bad enough.

I think it's such a shame that [Walt Disney] didn't live to see computer animation, because he would have had a good time with it . . . In those days it was before the blue screen. They used what was called yellow sulphur lighting--the screen was yellow, and we worked with that all day, and by the time the day was over you couldn't see anything . . . It was just an empty soundstage. And sometimes we didn't even have the music--we would just dance to a click rhythm. But I think technically it holds up today just as well as anything.

[about Mary Poppins (1964)] I thought Walt Disney hired me because I was such a great singer and dancer. As it turns out, he had heard me in an interview talking about what was happening to family entertainment. I was decrying the fact that it seemed like no holds were barred anymore in entertainment . . . That's why he called me in, because I said something he agreed with. And I got the part.

It was a marvelous relaxer . . . Jack Daniels (Tennessee Whiskey) became my good friend. Then sometime in my early forties he turned on me.

But at the time, I thought I would come out, because there was such a strange perception about alcoholism that people had serious character flaws, you know. They had weak wills or something. They had this image of, you know, a guy laying in on the street and skid row, whereas it can happen to normal, average middle-class guy.

I think that cigarettes are worse. I think that nicotine ... I've heard heroin addicts and cocaine addicts say it was nothing compared to getting off cigarettes.

I'm really in retirement. My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

We had a little ranch way out in the middle of nowhere. My wife didn't like showbusiness - as most spouses don't: they get shunted aside. But it was too soon for me. I could not afford either emotionally or financially to quit and retire. Not in my forties. We finally parted company because of that. And now another forty years have gone by and I've been very busy. I still am.

I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced and he said 'Yes, but it hurts now.' That's exactly it. I can still dance too but it hurts now! I've always kept moving. I was at the gym at six this morning. Of course marrying a beautiful young woman has been a big help. There are so many years between us and we don't feel it. I'm emotionally immature and she's very wise for her age so we kind of meet in the middle.

I've found a home here because actors have always said, 'He's really a dancer', and dancers said, 'No, no he's a singer', and singers said, 'No I think he's an actor.' I don't know, I was never that good at anything but I did a little bit of it all. I've never studied dancing but I've always loved to dance. I never sang anywhere except the shower and it took me forever to get into the high school choir. When I auditioned for Bye Bye Birdie (1963) I did a song and a little soft-shoe and for some reason they saw I could move. And I've never studied acting - which is maybe lucky otherwise I'd just be a copy of everybody else.

I was a Laurel & Hardy nut. I got to know Laurel at the end of his life and it was a great thrill for me. He left me his bow tie and derby and told me that if they ever made a movie about him, he'd want me to play him.

It's quite hard to act yourself all the time. My first wife, Margie, used to say she could see no difference between Rob [the husband he played on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) for five years] and me. She said 'You're not acting. You are exactly the same on screen as you are at home.'

People from the UK love to tease me. I invented a whole new dialect. I never could do a British accent, not even in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

[on turning down The Omen (1976)] My god, that was stupid. Gregory Peck got the part, but at that time there was a lot of violence in it - people impaled on things. I was pretty puritan at the time, a goody-two-shoes, I felt I'd put myself in a position where the audience trusted me. I turned down several things for that reason - either taste or violence or sex or something.

My whole generation has disappeared on me. My contemporaries, not in talent but in age, were Paul Newman, Jack Lemmon, Rock Hudson. All gone.

I was an alcoholic for about twenty-five years. In the Fifties and Sixties, everybody had their martini, everybody smoked incessantly. The funny thing is that all through my twenties and early thirties I didn't drink at all. Then we moved to a neighborhood full of young families with the same age kids and everyone drank heavily, there were big parties every night. I would go to work with terrible hangovers which if you're dancing is really hard. I was in deep trouble, you get suicidal and think you just can't go on. I had suicidal feelings, it was just terrible. But then suddenly, like a blessing, the drink started not to taste good. I would feel a little dizzy and a little nauseous and I wasn't getting the click. Today I wouldn't want a drink for anything. But I do occasionally think of taking a nice drag. I've been on this gum for ten years and it's just as addictive but at least it's not hurting my lungs. (2013)

It took Walt twenty years to talk Travers [P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins novels] into giving him the rights for the picture and then she fought him tooth and nail all the way through it. She hated me, she hated Julie Andrews, she didn't think either one of us were right. After the premiere she met Walt in the lobby and said, 'All the animation has to go.' Walt said, 'Pamela, the boat has sailed.'

Last night CNN International CNN gave me ten minutes live to talk about Bernie Sanders who has been scantily covered by them in favor of the Donald J. Trump circus. It was pre-empted completely to cover another outburst by Trump. This pandering to the scandal hungry public is a total lack of responsible journalism. I accuse CNN of extreme bias.

[on Donald Trump] He has been a magnet to all the racists and xenophobes in the country. I haven't been this scared since the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think the human race is hanging in a delicate balance right now, and I'm just so afraid he will put us in a war. He scares me.

[on the death of Mary Tyler Moore]: There are no words. She was the best! We always said that we changed each other's lives for the better.

People in the UK love to rib me about my accent, I will never live it down. They ask what part of England I was meant to be from and I say it was a little shire in the north where most of the people were from Ohio. I was working with an entire English cast and nobody said a word, not Julie, not anybody said I needed to work on it so I thought I was alright.

I appreciate this opportunity to apologize to the members of Bafta for inflicting on them the most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema.

I almost killed myself stopping. I got the gum and I was chewing the gum and I was wearing the patch ... My heart rate was about 140 all the time. Thank God I survived that.

I would like to say a word about age. I'm 15 years older than Bernie. I've always admired Bernie and I've followed his career. He's never been - to me - a career politician. He's just a patriot who worked as hard as he could.

I'm Dick Van Dyke and I'm a very enthusiastic supporter of Bernie Sanders. The age question keeps coming up. I know that I'm 20 years older than Bernie. I have all my marbles! I could run for office if I wanted to. So I don't think age - it really doesn't matter, except for his experience and the years he's put in. I can't understand why, according to the polls, he's having problems with older citizens, like me. Why wouldn't an older citizen vote for somebody with that kind of a record, and that kind of experience and honesty? It just doesn't make sense to me that he's not getting my generation. And I want to urge my generation to get out and vote for him, please.

Another four years of the current administration and we won't have democracy anymore. Bernie has been consistent with his policies ever since I met him when he was in the Senate. He never has changed his attack because of outside pressure from the outside or when he felt the wind was blowing in another way. He stuck with who he is and what he believes in. I think somebody younger like Bernie, is just a perfect candidate. Yeah, I think he'll be around a long time.

[At an interview for the Daily Mail, in regards to his struggle with alcoholism and how he managed to quit]We were making dinner one night and after taking a sip of wine, I put the glass down and said: 'Boy, that's making me ill.' From then on, my desire to drink vanished.

[on his marriage to Arlene Silver] My brother just said, 'It'll never work. What do you talk about? What do you do together?' The fact is, we talk all the time, and we do everything together.

[on the death of his first wife] Even though we were long divorced, with her death I lost a part of myself.

We were making dinner one night and after taking a sip of wine, I put the glass down and said: 'Boy, that's making me ill.' From then on, my desire to drink vanished.

Both of the cable network stations printed headlines, 'Corrupt, our Supreme Court justice system is corrupt'. And then nothing. Silence. Not another word ... They dropped the subject as if it had been squelched. I'm beginning to feel a little manipulated.

[on the 2024 US presidential election] I want Abraham Lincoln.

Our Supreme Court has delayed any decision about our president's immunity and at the same time they've stalled everything. Donald Trump's path to the White House is pretty clear now.

[on Donald Trump] Well, he is disturbed.

I'm very, very worried. No kidding, in every respect. What's happening with our weather? No one knows - one hurricane, tornado after another. There seems to be something wrong with people. People, instead of going to the ballot box, are rioting for no reason, and it doesn't make any difference.

I'm going to support Biden. I've got all my marbles, and I'm old enough to be his father. I'm actually old enough in years to be his father. So I'm not worried about it.

[on meeting Donald Trump] I met him at a party out here in Malibu, before he was in politics. He was in a Hawaiian shirt, open, big belly, all nice and tan. Couple of gold chains hanging around his neck, and a blonde on his arm. I'll be charitable and say she was 20. And he looked down on me like, 'Who are you?'

I met Joe Biden. And I said, 'I used to be as tall as you are.' He said, 'I used to have hair like you.' I liked him right away.

Russia is poised along the Ukraine border with nuclear weapons. China has already announced it's going to take Taiwan back. I think we are on the verge of maybe the end. I'm that worried about it.

1964. A lot has happened. Not so much as Martin Luther [King] dreamed of, but it's a start.

[on endorsing Karmala Harris] Hatred is not the norm. Prejudice is not the norm. Suspicion, dislike, jealousy, scapegoating, none of those are the transcendent facets of the human personality. They are diseases. They are the cancers of the soul. They are the infectious and contagious viruses that have been breeding humanity for years. And because they have been and because they are, is it necessary that they shall be? I think not.

Let us be ashamed to live without that victory.

There will be moments of violence and expressions of hatred and an ugly echo of intolerance, but these are the clinging vestiges of a decayed past, not the harbingers of the better, cleaner future. To those who tell us that the inequality of the human animal is a necessary evil, we must respond by simply saying that first, it is evil but it is not necessary. We prove it by reaffirming our faith. We prove it by having faith in our affirmations.

[on Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 US presidential election] Fortunately, I won't be around to experience the four years.

I'm acutely aware that I could go any day now, but I don't know why, it doesn't concern me, I'm not afraid of it. I have that feeling totally against anything intellectual I have, that I'm going to be alright. It certainly is a feeling of caring about the welfare and the life of the other person as much as you care for yourself.

I think I'm one of those lucky people who got to do for a living, to do what I would've done anyway. When you think how lucky I am, I got to do what I do, play and act silly.