Jerry Seinfeld is the popular stage name of Jerome Allen Seinfeld. Seinfeld is a renowned American comedian, actor, writer and producer. He is popularly recognized as a stand-up comedian who has achieved great accolades in the field of comedy. He made his stand-up comedy debut in the year 1976. From then he had no stoppage, and he went ahead to appear on "The Tonight Show" in 1981 which made him a national sensation of America.
Apart from this, he is best known for playing a role in the sitcom "Seinfeld", in which he plays a fictionalized version of himself. "Seinfeld" flooded him with a lot of appreciations and compliments and supposedly the show ran for nine seasons. It was the highest-rated show in the USA in 1998. The show was known for his acting skills and wit and humour.
Talking about his birth, Seinfeld was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York, USA. He derives his legacy of comedy from his father - Kálmán Seinfeld, who is said to have collected jokes that he heard while serving in World War II.
Seinfeld was raised in Massapequa York where he attended Massapequa High School. He graduated from Queens College, City University, New York, with a degree in communications and theatre. He started training in comedy at a very tender age of around eight. He has been involved in various domains of art besides indulging in politics.
Seinfeld has carried out presidential campaigns for George W. Bush and has been actively involved in philanthropy and donation drives. Seinfeld has a lot of awards in his kitty yet the most significant award he has won been the "American Comedy Award for funniest male Performer in TV Series" which he won in 1992.
Today, Seinfeld is extremely rich and popular and has carved an exotic niche for himself in the field of performing art.
Famous quotes by Jerry Seinfeld
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
This quote resembles a poem that Robert Frost has written- "The Road not traveled". Perhaps the inspiration of this quote for Seinfeld is Frost who talks about how any path that's less travelled by a person makes all the difference in determining the career or life he or she achieves.
In this quote, Seinfeld says that the reason for a particular road (career, choices etc.) not having been travelled by a person also has a reason, which makes a difference in the way a person lives life. Sometimes out of fear, anxiety or hurdles, a person refrains from treading on a difficult path. However, that difficult road is the one that really determines success and future.
You can be passionate about anything. Pay attention, don't let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.
Seinfeld is pointing at a very crucial element of way of living here. He is advocating the fact that one should fall in love with anything that one loves. It can be anything as boring or mundane as the back of a cereal box or as exciting as a horse ride of visiting a hill station. This quote is trying to inspire one to be passionate about anything. This quote is trying to push us not to fear being judged for having a passion that doesn't fit the societal standards.
He's also advocating to look closely at everything minute in life. Pay attention to small details as sometimes smaller things like cereal boxes can give joy that bigger things cannot.
You know you're getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It's like,' See if you can blow this out.'
On the face of it, it's a very funny and hilarious joke or perhaps a quote in which Seinfeld is somehow making us all come to terms with adversities of old age. This adversity lies in the fact that blowing a single candle on cake becomes difficult in old age. However, there's deep-rooted symbolism in this quote. He's trying to tell us how very minute things like not being able to blow the candle, not running fast etc. become natural determinants of old age. This quote somehow has a tinge of irony in it because celebrating birthdays in old age is almost synonymous to nearing one's end. As if the cake and candle both challenge the person to see if the person can cut or blow it off.
The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it's so much fun.
This is perhaps a golden rule that Seinfeld has given us. It is especially a golden rule for all those who are willing to carve out a comedy career. He says that a comedian supposedly has to make his/her/their families and strangers laugh. But a real comedian is actually the one who makes the audience and strangers imitate his/her/their acts. The way the comedian cracks a joke, the way of speaking, gestures everything when aped by the strangers make up for a successful comedian. Because ultimately, leaving a deep impact is what comedians are supposed to do.
To me, if life boils down to one thing, it's movement. To live is to keep moving.
This is undoubtedly a life-saving mantra. Look at how beautiful this quote actually sounds! When you just don't learn and move on in life, you tend to become those green algae in a pond with water that doesn't move too. Yet if you look at the fresh fast flowing water in any brook or river, you realize the beauty of moving, keep going and never giving up. The same metaphor applies to one's life wherein if one actually gets stuck at one thing or in one place; there's no emotional growth in a person. However, if one moves, one grows at the same time.
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
This line draws our attention to how the quintessential component of life are bookstores. Bookstores are true testimonials of those individuals who love reading and pondering over ideas in a book. Bookstores are always filled with amazing people who love to read yet also turn on their thinking caps simultaneously. Thus, the very presence of bookstores and those people in it shows how we as a society are still attached with love for reading and "thinking".
The advice I would give [the younger me]—or any young person—would be "Keep your head up in failure and your head down in success."
What a beautiful one this is! Especially for youngsters who are in the ongoing learning process to stay grounded when they achieve anything. Seinfeld says that young people should always learn the art of staying proud and bold while failing at something. However, when one achieves success, one should gently bow down and not go about flaunting it. This very advice is important to keep oneself modest, even in success and strong in failures.
I am so busy doing nothing… that the idea of doing anything – which as you know, always leads to something – cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.
This is a very deep understanding quite embedded in the human mind's psychology. What is being said in the above quote is that one imagines oneself doing nothing. This idea of doing nothing puts a lot of pressure on the human mind to do something as one gets anxious about wasting time by not doing anything. However, when one tries to do something, one ends up again in the same zone of "not doing anything". This zone only ends up making the person drop everything that he/she/they would be doing at some point. Thus, the conclusion is that not doing anything always leads to greater anxiety. Thus, one should keep indulging oneself in small tasks.
The less you know about a field, the better your odds. Dumb boldness is the best way to approach a new challenge."
This is again a beautiful line that explains how the lesser you know about the odds in a field, it makes way for you to be bold enough to not underestimate or overestimate the odds in it. Knowing less about the difficulties in a field is always good because it doesn't scare one not to take up the challenge. Thus, the dumbness of not knowing about odds and boldness of taking up that field makes up for a good combination.
Once you start doing only what you've already proven you can do, you're on the road to death."
Seinfeld is quite blunt in this quote. This line is for all those who start doing things they have achieved great success in. If one has achieved tremendous success in one field and only indulges in that field, that's completely the road to death. For this way, the person is only doing something that he/she/they has already proven their mettle in. Thus, growth stops at that moment only. Instead, trying new things is the formula to keep growing.
Find the torture you're comfortable with and you'll do well."
One should always look up for things that challenge oneself. For say, if one is passionate about swimming, one should go for it. However, the torture that anything brings with itself be it the physical torture or the mental challenges should be taken in a good light. Trying something new doesn't mean that there won't be hindrances. Yet if you get comfortable with that torture and hindrance once, the sky is yours!
The whole reason you watch a TV show is because it ends. If I wanted a long, boring story with no point to it, I have my life."
Quite a witty and ironic line this is! Seinfeld is good at telling us in his humorous tone that everyone is aware that it's going to end someday while watching TV. However, if one has to watch a long and boring story, it's life itself. Thus, what he is trying to say is that life is long. It comes with its own trials and tribulations. One should never equate watching TV with life because life comes with no guarantee of ending.
If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?
Books, especially self-help books, sell because they talk about one's failures. Books talk about how a particular personality rose from rags to riches. Thus, books' essence lies in their honesty and truthfulness of genuinely talking about failures. If a book doesn't openly and blatantly talk about failures, it won't be a bestseller. Thus, stories of failures make way for some successful bestselling books.
There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.
Well, this line is pointing out at how the family as a whole is not homogenous. It's made up of a lot of people who have different tastes and choices. What may be fun for one person may not be fun for the other. Someone in the family may like gardening. Someone in the family may not like it. Thus, there's literally no such thing as one common fun for the whole family. It always has to be individual fun that binds the family together as a whole.
Make no mistake about why these babies are here - they are here to replace us.
The younger generation's presence indicates them taking up their elders and parents' places. Not just in terms of property, money, but also in terms of physical space. One can also look at this line from the point of view of Seinfeld who perhaps is telling us how as a comedian he's now ageing and it's the younger generation that will be taking their place sometime in future.
Image Attributions:
- David Shankbone, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
