Andy Rooney

Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011) was an American radio and television writer. He was most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on 60 Minutes aired October 2, 2011. He died one month later, on November 4, 2011, at age 92.

Quotes

 * Arranged in ascending chronological order


 * Some banks get stuck with a name that sounded good a hundred years ago when they were founded but sounds kind of silly now. In New York, there's a Dime Savings Bank. Once you pass forty, a dime isn't worth bending over to pick up if you drop one. You certainly wouldn't bother to take it to a bank to save it.


 * Democrats believe people are basically good but must be saved from themselves by their government. Republicans believe people are basically bad but they'll be okay if they're left alone.


 * The one affectation I have forced on the publisher … are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.


 * At the end of every television broadcast, the names of the people who worked on it are listed. Why, you may ask yourself sometimes, would so many people want to take credit for such a bad show? Well, its just like what's happened to the dollar. Credits in television suffer from inflation. There are more of them and they arent worth what they used to be, even on a good show.


 * President Reagan must be happy over how bad the weather's been this winter, because its the one thing no one's blaming on him. Theres nothing television news likes better than bad weather, and we sure get a lot of it in the United States.


 * I wish people who sell things would stop trying to guess how many of something we want to buy. I want to buy things one at a time.


 * Ive had quite a few complaints lately from people who like it when I complain about things. They say I havent complained about anything lately. So tonight, for you complaint fans, I have a complaint.

Misattributed

 * "I want to live my next life backwards: You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day. Then you get kicked out for being too healthy. Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension. Then when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years until you're too young to work. You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you're generally promiscuous. Then you go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, and you have no responsibilities. Then you become a baby, and then... You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions - central heating, room service on tap, and then... You finish off as an orgasm."
 * Variations of this piece have been misattributed to Andy Rooney, George Carlin, and Woody Allen. The original source is a variation on a piece by Sean Morey.

About

 * Alphabetized by author


 * There's nobody like Andy, and there never will be. He'll hate hearing this, but he's an American original.
 * , Chairman of and Executive Producer of 60 Minutes &mdash; quoted in


 * It's a sad day at 60 Minutes and for everybody here at CBS News. It's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much.
 * &mdash; quoted in