Bill Cosby: Quotes from a Wise and Funny Man.

Bill Cosby - comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he  is well known for television roles in I Spy, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and The Bill Cosby Show. Cosby has also acted in a number of films.

For many years, Bill Cosby has both entertained and educated the world with his wit and wisdom on the topics of life, laughter and raising children.

Here are some great quotes:

A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.

People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on.

That married couples can live together day after day is a miracle that the Vatican has overlooked.

The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods.

Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge.

The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.

The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.

There is hope for the future because God has a sense of humor and we are funny to God.

There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right.

Gray hair is God's graffiti.

When you become senile, you won't know it.

Old is always fifteen years from now.

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

On Raising Children
You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who've never had any.

Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you're telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.

Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.

I guess the real reason that my wife and I had children is the same reason that Napoleon had for invading Russia: it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.

Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children, my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die.

Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.

My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.

Nothing I've ever done has given me more joys and rewards than being a father to my children.

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.

If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.

Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.