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53 Yogi Berra Quotes: His Funniest One-Liners and Witticisms

53 Yogi Berra Quotes: His Funniest One-Liners and Witticisms
Former Major League Baseball player and manager Yogi Berra poses at a lighting ceremony at the Empire State Building in celebration of MLB All-Star Week July 11, 2008 in New York City. (Brad Barket/Getty Images)

By    |   Wednesday, 23 September 2015 09:56 AM EDT

Baseball legend Yogi Berra died Tuesday at age 90, and while many will certainly remember him as a 10-time World Series champion, many will also remember him for his brilliant one-liners.

"When I'm sittin' down to dinner with the family, stuff just pops out," Berra insisted during a recent interview, The Associated Press reported. "And they'll say, 'Dad, you just said another one.' And I don't even know what the heck I said."

The well-known book "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" lists eight of Berra's witticisms, but we've gathered 53 below attributed to the baseball great.
  1. "I never said most of the things I said."
  2. "It ain’t over till it’s over."
  3. "Mickey Mantle was a very good golfer, but we weren’t allowed to play golf during the season; only at spring training."
  4. "If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them."
  5. "Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical."
  6. "I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won 25 games. What I don’t understand is how he lost five."
  7. "In baseball, you don’t know nothing."
  8. "I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?"
  9. "I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house."
  10. "I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I’d never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest-high catch, and he never walked off the field."
  11. "It’s deja vu all over again."
  12. "I usually take a two-hour nap from 1 to 4."
  13. "Never answer an anonymous letter."
  14. "We made too many wrong mistakes."
  15. "You can observe a lot by watching."
  16. "The future ain’t what it used to be."
  17. "If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."
  18. "You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there."
  19. "It gets late early out here."
  20. "Even Napoleon had his Watergate."
  21. "Pair up in threes."
  22. "We have deep depth."
  23. "Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel."
  24. "Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded."
  25. "All pitchers are liars or crybabies."
  26. "A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore."
  27. "Bill Dickey is learning me his experience."
  28. "He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious."
  29. "I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."
  30. "I don’t know (if they were men or women fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads."
  31. "I’m a lucky guy and I’m happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary."
  32. "I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did."
  33. "It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility."
  34. "So I’m ugly. I never saw anyone hit with his face."
  35. "Take it with a grin of salt."
  36. "We were overwhelming underdogs."
  37. "The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase."
  38. "You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours."
  39. "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
  40. "It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much."
  41. "If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer."
  42. "Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets."
  43. "You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it’ll go."
  44. "I’m lucky. Usually you’re dead to get your own museum, but I’m still alive to see mine."
  45. "If I didn’t make it in baseball, I won’t have made it workin’. I didn’t like to work."
  46. "If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be."
  47. "No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded."
  48. "You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six."
  49. "You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you."
  50. "Slump? I ain’t in no slump . . . I just ain’t hitting."
  51. "How can you think and hit at the same time?"
  52. "I tell the kids, somebody’s gotta win, somebody’s gotta lose. Just don’t fight about it. Just try to get better."
  53. "A lot of guys go, 'Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism.' I tell 'em, 'I don’t know any.' They want me to make one up. I don’t make ’em up. I don’t even know when I say it. They’re the truth. And it is the truth. I don’t know."

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TheWire
Baseball legend Yogi Berra died Tuesday at age 90, and while many will certainly remember him as a 10-time World Series champion, many will also remember him for his brilliant one-liners.
yogi berra, quotes, funniest, one liners
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2015-56-23
Wednesday, 23 September 2015 09:56 AM
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