Seinfeld Quotes

I’ve been a long time fan of the show “Seinfeld”. It makes very interesting observations on things that we find so easy to overlook.

So here’s a huge collection of Jerry’s quotes from the show that I’ve collected from various web-sites.

WHAT WOMEN WANT:

I swear, I have absolutely no idea what women are thinking. I don’t get it, OK? I, I, I admit, I, I’m not getting the signals. I am not getting it! Women, they’re so subtle, their little.. everything they do is subtle.. men are not subtle, we are obvious. Women know what men want, men know what men want, what do we want? We want women, that’s it! It’s the only thing we know for sure, it really is: we want women. How do we get them? Oh, we don’t know ’bout that, we don’t know. The next step after that we have no idea. This is why you see men honking car-horns, yelling from construction sites. These are the best ideas we’ve had so far.. The car-horn-honk, is that a beauty? Have you seen men doing this? What is this? The man is in the car, the woman walks by the front of the car, he honks. This man is out of ideas. The amazing thing is, that we still get women, don’t we. Men, I mean, men are with women. You see men with women. How are men getting women, many people wonder. Let me tell you a little bit about our organization. Where ever women are, we have a man working on the situation right now. Now, he may not be our best man, OK, we have a lot of areas to cover, but someone from our staff is on the scene. That’s why, I think, men get frustrated, when we see women reading articles, like: “Where to meet men?”. We’re here, we are everywhere. We’re honking our horns to serve you better.

DETERGENT:

I see TV ads about detergents that can get blood stains out of your cloths. I say if you have blood stains on your cloths you have bigger problems than laundry.

FASHION:

I am so tired of having to come up with another little outfit for myself everyday. In fact, I will say this—and I think many people agree with me—I think eventually fashion won’t even exist. I think someday we’ll all wear the same thing. Because anytime I see a movie or a TV show where there are people from the future or another planet, they’re all wearing the same outfit. Somehow they all decided, “All right, that’s enough. From now on, this is going to be our outfit. One-piece silver jump suit, with a V-stripe on the chest, and boots. That’s it. We’re going to start visiting other planets and we want to look like a team.”

ANSWERING MACHINE:

Have you ever called someone up and you’re disappointed when they answer the phone? You wanted the machine. And you’re always kind of thrown off. You go, “Oh, I uh, I, didn’t know you were there, I just wanted to leave a message saying, ‘Sorry I missed you’.” So because of the phone machine, what you can have is two people that don’t really ever want to talk, and the phone machine is like this relationship respirator keeping these marginal, brain-dead relationships alive. Why do we do this? Because when we come home we want to see that little flashing red light and go, “All right, messages.” People need that. It’s very important for human beings to feel they are popular and well-liked amongst a large group people that they have no interest in.

HOSPITALS:

I hate the waiting room because it’s called the waiting room so there’s no chance of not waiting. It’s built, deigned, and intended for waiting. Why would they take you right away when they’ve got this room all set up? And you sit there with your little magazine. You pretend you’re reading it but you’re really looking at the other people. “I wonder what he’s got.” Then the finally call you, and you think you’re going to see the doctor, but you’re not. You’re going into the next smaller room waiting room. Now you don’t even have your magazine. You’ve got no pants on. You’re looking at colon-cancer brochures, peeking out the blinds. But medically speaking, it’s always good to be in a small room. You don’t want to be in a large room. Have you ever seen these operating theaters that they have with stadium seating? You don’t want them doing anything to you that makes other doctors go, “Well, I have to see this. Are you kidding? Are they really goign to do that? Are there seats? Can we get in?” I wonder if they ever have scalp tickets to an operation? “I got two for the Winslow tumor, who needs two?”

DATING:

Dating is pressure and tension. What is a date, really, but a job interview that lasts all night? The only difference between a date and a job interview is that in not many job interviews is there a chance you’ll end up naked at the end of it.
“Well, Bill, the boss thinks you’re the man for the job. Why don’t you strip down and meet some of the people you’ll be working with?”

SEX:

Seems to me the basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we’re doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They’re very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.

Men and women all in all, behave just like our basic sexual elements. If you watch single men on a weekend night they really act very much like sperm – all disorganized, bumping into their friends, swimming in the wrong direction. “I was first.” “Let me through.” “You’re on my tail.” “That’s my spot.” They’re like the Three Billion Stooges. But the egg is very cool: “Well, who’s it going to be? I can divide. I can wait a month. I’m not swimming anywhere.”

THE RELATIONSHIP:

Why is commitment such a big problem for a man? I think that for some reason when a man is driving down that freeway of love, the woman he’s with is like an exit, but he doesn’t want to get off there. He wants to keep driving. And the woman is like, “Look, gas, food, lodging, that’s our exit, that’s everything we need to be happy…Get off here, now!” But the man is focusing on sign underneath that says, “Next exit 27 miles,” and he thinks, “I can make it.” Sometimes he can, sometimes he can’t. Sometimes, the car ends up on the side of the road, hood up and smoke pouring out of the engine. He’s sitting on the curb all alone, “I guess I didn’t realize how many miles I was racking up.”

MARRIAGE TUXEDO:

The idea behind the tuxedo is the woman’s point of view that men are all the same, so we might as well dress them that way. That’s why a wedding is like the joining together of a beautiful, glowing bride and some guy. The tuxedo is a wedding safety device, created by women because they know that men are undependable. So in case the groom chickens out, everybody just takes one step over, and she marries the next guy.

DRY CLEANING:

Let’s get one thing straight about dry cleaning right now. It doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as dry cleaning. There’s no way of cleaning with dry. Dry itself is nothing. You can’t use it. You can’t do anything with it. It’s not there. Dry is nothing. Are you listening to me? And we walk into these places with the big signs out front, “Dry Cleaning,” and somehow never question how they were able to put this absurd concept over on us.
If I gave you a filthy shirt and said, “I want this immaculate. And no liquids!” what are you going to do? Shake it? Tap it? Blow on it? Give me a break. You almost can’t get something dirty with dry, let alone cleaning it.

COOKERY SHOWS:

I will never understand why they cook on TV. I can’t smell it. Can’t eat it. Can’t taste it. The end of the show they hold it up to the camera, “Well, here it is. You can’t have any. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.”

TRYING ON A DRESS:

I’ve been watching women in the department stores. They’re trying on clothes, and I’ve noticed that they do it differently from men. Women don’t try on the clothes, they get behind the clothes, you see? They take a dress off the rack, and they hold it up against themselves. They can tell something from this. They stick one leg way out ’cause they need to know, “If some day I’m one-legged, and at a forty-five degree angle, what am I gonna wear?” You never see a man do that. You never see a guy take a suit off the rack, put his head in the neck, and go, “What do you think about this suit? I think I’ll get it. Yeah, it looks fine. Put some shoes by the bottom of the pants, I wanna make sure. Yeah, perfect. And what if I’m walking? Move the shoes, move the shoes, move the shoes, move the shoes.”

AGE GAP HIRING:

What’s with the age gap hiring policy at most movie theaters? Did you ever notice, they never hire anyone between the ages of fifteen…and eighty, you know what I mean? Like, the girl that sells you the ticket, she’s ten. Then there’s the guy who rips the ticket, he’s a hundred and two. So, what happened in the middle, there? You couldn’t find anybody? It’s like they want to show you how life comes full circle. You’re fifteen, you sell the tickets. Then you leave, you go out, you have a family, kids, marriage, career, grandchildren, eighty years later, you’re back in the same theater three feet away. Ripping tickets. Took you eighty years to move three feet.

MOVIE PLOTS:

I always get confused in the movie theater by the, by the plot. It’s embarrassing. It’s an embarrassment to have to admit, but I’m the one that you see in the parking lot after the movie talking with his friends, going: “Oh, you mean that was the same guy from the beginning…Ohhhhhhhhhh…” Nobody will explain it to you. When you’re in the theater, you can’t find out. “Why did they kill that guy?… Why did they kill him?… Who was that guy? What was the…I thought he was with them? Wasn’t he with them? Why would they kill him if he was with them? Oh, he wasn’t really with them….I thought he was with them. It’s a good thing they killed him.”

ADULTERY:

You can’t just have an adultery– you commit adultery. And you can’t even commit adultery unless you already have a commitment. So you have to make the commitment before you can even think about committing it. There’s no commit without the commit. Then, once you commit, then you can commit the adultery and then you get caught, get divorced, lose your mind and they have you committed. But you know some people actually cheat on the people that they’re cheating with. Which is like, you know, being in a hold up and then turning to the robber next to you and going “Alright, gimme everything you have, too”.

GIVING THE FINGER:

So I move into the center lane, now I get ahead of this women, who felt for some reason I guess, that she thought that I cut her off. So, she pulls up along side of me, gives me.. the finger. It seems like such an.. arbitrary, ridiculous thing to just pick a finger and you show it to the person. It’s a finger. What does it mean? Someone shows me one of their fingers and I’m supposed to feel bad. Is that the way it’s supposed to work? I mean, you could just give someone the toe, really. Couldn’t you? I would feel worse if I got the toe, than if I got the finger. ‘Cause it’s not easy to give someone the toe. You’ve gotta get the shoe off, the sock of and drive, get it up and, uh, pretends to drive with a foot out the window, and speaks to person driving next to him: “Look at that toe, buddy.” I mean, that’s really insulting to get the toe, isn’t it?

DOG POOP:

On my block, a lot of people walk their dogs and I always see them walking along with their little poop bags. This, to me, is the lowest activity in human life. Following a dog with a little pooper scooper. Waiting for him to go so you can walk down the street with it in your bag. If aliens are watching this through telescopes, they’re going to think the dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them is making a poop, the other one’s carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge?

BODY ODOR:

Can someone please tell me what is the deal with B.O.? Everything in nature has a function, a purpose, except B.O. It doesn’t make any sense. Do something good—hard work, exercise—smell very bad. That is the way the human being is designed. You move, you stink. Why don’t our bodies help us? Why can’t sweat smell good? Be a different world, wouldn’t it? Instead of putting your laundry in the hamper, you’d put it in a vase. Go down to the drugstore, pick up some odorant and perspirant. You’d have a dirt sweat sock hanging from the rearview mirror of your car. And then on a really special night, maybe a little underwear coming out of your breast pocket, just to show her that she’s important.

CLOTHES:

I once had a leather jacket that got ruined in the rain. Why does moisture ruin leather? Aren’t cows outside a lot of the time? When it’s raining, do cows go up to the farmhouse, “Let us in! We’re all wearing leather! Open the door! We’re going to ruin the whole outfit here!”

AMBULANCE:

I was in front of an ambulance the other day, and I noticed that the word “ambulance” was spelled in reverse print on the hood of the ambulance. And I thought, “Well, isn’t that clever.” I look in the rear-view mirror, I can read the word “ambulance” behind me. Of course while you’re reading, you don’t see where you’re going, you crash, you need an ambulance. I think they’re trying to drum up some business on the way back from lunch.

LIMO:

You know what I never get with the limo? The tinted windows. Is that so people don’t see you? Yeah, what a better way not to have people notice you than taking a thirty foot Cadillac with a TV antenna and a uniformed driver. How discreet. Nobody cares who’s in the limo. You see a limo go by, you know it’s either some rich jerk or fifty prom kids with $1.75 each.

AEROPLANE KEYS:

Are there keys to a plane? Maybe that’s what those delays are sometimes, when you’re just sitting there at the gate. Maybe the pilot sits up there in the cockpit going, “Oh, I don’t believe this. Dammit..I did it again.” They tell you it’s something mechanical because they don’t want to come on the P.A. system, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be delayed here on the ground for a while. I uh..Oh, God this is so embarrassing…I, I left the keys to the plane in my apartment. They’re in this big ashtray by the front door. I’m sorry, I’ll run back and get them.”

MEASUING DISTANCE BY TIME:

You can measure distance by time. “How far away is it?” “Oh about 20 minutes.” But it doesn’t work the other way. “When do you get off work?” “Around 3 miles.”

DEATH:

The Chalk Outline guy’s got a good job. Not too dangerous, the criminals are long gone. I guess these are people who wanted to be sketch artists but they couldn’t draw very well. “Uh, listen, Jon, forget the sketches, do you think if we left the dead body right there on the sidewalk you could manage to trace around it?”
How does that help them solve the crime? They look at the thing on the ground, “Oh, his arm was like that when he hit the pavement….the killer must have been…Jim.”

MIRROR:

I had a parakeet that used to fly around the house and crash into these huge mirrors my mother put in. Ever heard of this interior design principle, that a mirror makes it seem like you have an entire other room? What kind of jerk walks up to a mirror and goes, “Hey look, there’s a whole other room in there. There’s a guy that looks just like me in there.”
But the parakeet would fall for this. I’d let him out of his cage, he’d fly right into the mirror. And I’d always think, “Even if he thinks the mirror is another room, why doesn’t he at least try to avoid hitting the other parakeet?”

DOGS:
A dog will stay stupid. That’s why we love them so much. The entire time we know them, they’re idiots. Think of your dog. Everytime you come home, he thinks it’s amazing. He has no idea how you accomplish this every day. You walk in the door, the joy of this experience overwhelms him. He looks at you, HE’S BACK, IT’S THAT GUY, THAT SAME GUY. He can’t believe it. Everything is amazing to your dog. ANOTHER CAN OF FOOD? I DON’T BELIEVE IT.
Dogs want to be people. That’s what their lives are about. They don’t like being a dog. They’re with people all the time, they want to graduate. My dog would sit there all day, he would watch me walk by, he would think to himself, I COULD DO THAT! HE’S NOT THAT GOOD. That’s why the greatest, most exciting moment in the life of a dog is the front seat of your car. You and him in the front seat. It’s the only place where your head and his are on the exact same level. He sits up there, he thinks, THIS IS MORE LIKE IT. YOU AND ME TOGETHER, THIS IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE. He looks out the front. What’s he looking at? He’s a dog. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE – A RIGHT OR A LEFT? I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE I AM.
They have a hard time. They stand up, they sit down, they can’t handle the turn either way. No matter which way you turn, he’s not ready. They don’t know what to do. And then comes the great moment of frustration. You stop someplace and get something to eat. This kills him. You get a hamburger, this blows his mind. INSTANT FOOD WHENEVER YOU WANT IT? You know what this means to him? You ever see the look on his face? He looks over at you. HOW’D YOU GET THAT? ARE THEY GIVING IT TO EVERYBODY NOW? YOU THINK I COULD GET ONE? They can’t get anything.
Dogs have no money. Isn’t that amazing? They’re broke their entire lives. But they get through. You know why dogs have no money?
No pockets.

FRIENDS:

See, the great thing about guys is that we can become friends based on almost nothing. Just two guys will just become friends just because they’re two guys. That’s almost all we need to have in common. ‘Cause sports – sports and women – is really all we talk about. If there was no sports and no women the only thing guys would ever say is “So, what’s in the refrigerator?”
And as a guy I don’t know how I can break up with another guy. You know what I mean? I don’t know how to say, “Bill, I feel I need to see other men.” Do you know what I mean? There’s nothing I can do. I have to wait for someone to die. I think that’s the only way out of this relationship.

CHECK:

Never liked the check at the end of the meal system, because money’s a very different thing before and after you eat. Before you eat money has no value. And you don’t care about money when you’re hungry, you sit down at a restaurant. You’re like the ruler of an empire. “More drinks, appetizers, quickly, quickly! It will be the greatest meal of our lives.” Then after the meal, you know, you’ve got the pants open, you’ve got the napkins destroyed, cigarette butt in the mashed potatoes – then the check comes at that moment. People are always upset, you know. They’re mystified by the check. “What is this? How could this be?” They start passing it around the table, “Does this look right to you? We’re not hungry now. Why are we buying all this food?!”

INVESTMENT:

I’m not an investor. People always tell me, you should have your money working for you. I’ve decided I’ll do the work. I’m gonna let the money relax. You know what I mean? ‘Cause you send your money out there – working for you – a lot of times, it gets fired. You go back there, “What happened? I had my money. It was here, it was working for me.” “Yeah, I remember your money. Showing up late. Taking time off. We had to let him go.”

CHECKBOOK:

I have noticed that women are very fast with checks, y’know, ‘cuz they write out so many checks. The keys, they can never find in their purse, they don’t know where that is, but the check book they got that. They never fumble for the check book– the check book comes out of a holster: “Who do I make it out to?… There’s my ID…”. There’s something about a check that, to a man, is not masculine. I don’t know exactly what it is… I think to a man, a check is like a note from your mother that says “I don’t have any money, but if you’ll contact these people, I’m sure they’ll stick up for me…”

RELATIONSHIP:

Apparently Plato, who came up with the concept of the platonic relationship, was pretty excited about it. He named it after himself. He said “Yeah, I got this new thing- ‘platonic’. My idea, my name, callin’ it after myself… What I do is, I go out with the girls, I talk with them- don’t do anything…and go right home. What’dya think? I think it’s going to be big!” I bet you there were other guys in history that tried to get relationships named after them, but it didn’t work. Y’know, I bet you there were guys who tried to do it, just went: “Hi, my name’s Rico. Would you like to go to bed immediately? Hey, it’s a ‘Riconic’ relationship…”

WORKING WITH TOOLS:

It’s true, men hear a drill, it’s like a dog whistle. Just.. you know, they go running up to that living room curtain, “Honey, I think Jim’s working on something over there.” So they run over to the guy. Now they don’t actually help the guy. No, they just want to hang around the area where work is being done. That’s what men want to do. We want to watch the guy, we want to talk to him, we want to ask him dumb questions. You know, “What are you using, the Philips head?” You know, we feel involved. That’s why when they have construction sites, they have to have those wood panel fences around it, that’s just to keep the men out. They cut those little holes for us so we can see what the hell is going on. But if they don’t cut those holes – we are climbing those fences. Right over there. “What are you using the steel girders down there? Yeah, that’ll hold.”

DISAGREEMENT:

Kids could always resolve any dispute by calling it. One of them will say, “I got the front seat.” “I want the front seat.” “I called it.” And the other kid has no recourse. “He called it, what can I do?” If there was a kid court of law it holds up. “You Honor, my client did ask for the front seat.” The judge says, “Did he call it?” “Well, no, he didn’t call it…” He bangs the gavel. “Objection overruled. He has to call it. Case closed.”

CLEAVAGE:

Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun. You can’t stare at it long, it’s too risky. You get a sense of it then you look away.

SWISS ARMY:

The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews, Bottle openers. ‘Come on, buddy, let’s go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he’s got a spoon. Back off. I’ve got the toe clippers right here.

TV:

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV.

VIRGINS:

Men, we drive ourselves crazy. Men always want to marry a virgin, but during the act of sex on the wedding night we tell the women to say ‘you’re the best, you’re the best’, then afterwards we wonder better than who?

COURTING:

There is one service men provide to women everywhere, regardless of race or culture, and that is courting. 3 billion men on earth, all willing to provide this service at anytime, in any place. By the way, men go about their daily business for one purpose… to get the attention of women. Like the guy coming out of his space-ship, he’s been in orbit for 3 weeks; first woman he sees he’ll be like, ‘So, did you see me up there?’

BIRTHDAY: (not funny….. not funny at all!…………. but quite true nonetheless!!)

Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year’s gone by and how little we’ve grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, each flicker of the candles on the cake we know it’s not to be. That for the rest of our sad, wretched, pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably. Happy birthday?!! No such thing.