Which are your favorite Alex Trebek quotes?
Alex Trebek is a Canadian-American television personality, game show host, and actor. He is best known as the host of the syndicated game show ‘Jeopardy!’.
In 1991, he made broadcast history when he became the first person to host three American game shows at the same time. Trebek has hosted several other game shows, including ‘The Wizard of Odds’, ‘Double Dare’, ‘High Rollers’, ‘Battlestars’, ‘Classic Concentration’, and ‘To Tell the Truth’.
Here’s our collection of the best Alex Trebek quotes:
50 Wise Alex Trebek Quotes
1. “I’d be lying if I said the journey had been an easy one. There were some good days but a lot of not-so-good days. I joked with friends that the cancer won’t kill me, the chemo treatments will. There were moments of great pain. Moments when certain bodily functions no longer functioned and some massive attacks of great depression that made me wonder if it was really worth fighting on.” – Alex Trebek
2. “I apologize to her (wife) and explain that it has nothing to do with my love for her or my feelings for her. It just has to do with the fact that I feel like I’m a terrible burden to her. And that bothers me tremendously.” – Alex Trebek
3. “Jim Cummings, Whoopie Goldberg & Cheech Marin make up this famous Disney threesome.” – Alex Trebek
4. “If you can’t be in awe of Mother Nature, there’s something wrong with you.” – Alex Trebek
5. “It’s a quality program, and I think I do a good job hosting it, and when I start slipping, I’ll stop hosting.” – Alex Trebek
6. “Take your job seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously.” – Alex Trebek
7. “Maybe I’ll take a little better care of myself, but I wouldn’t count on it.” – Alex Trebek
8. “Music Hop’ in 1963 was my first hosting job of a variety program.” – Alex Trebek
9. “My job is to provide the atmosphere and assistance to the contestants to get them to perform at their very best. And if I’m successful doing that, I will be perceived as a nice guy, and the audience will think of me as being a bit of a star.” – Alex Trebek
10th of 50 Alex Trebek Quotes
10. “It’s not a show about good and evil, but it’s a show about right and wrong, and the bracing certainty that he expresses is so rare in our muddled lives.” – Alex Trebek
11. “Don’t minimize the importance of luck in determining life’s course.” – Alex Trebek
12. “Sometimes you look at something, you look at someone, and you know. I mean, you’ve heard stories of people who meet and decide within half an hour; I knew this was going to be the person I’d end up with. With Jeanie, that’s how it was. I wasn’t looking for love. But I recognized at a gut level that here was someone who was going to complete me as a human being.” – Alex Trebek
13. “I don’t gamble, because winning a hundred dollars doesn’t give me great pleasure. But losing a hundred dollars pisses me off.” – Alex Trebek
14. “Sex? Unfortunately, as you get older – and I shouldn’t admit this – there are other things that become more important in your daily life.” – Alex Trebek
15. “There’s a certain comfort that comes from knowing a fact.” – Alex Trebek
16. “Merv Griffin, who developed Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, had a great line once. I used to personally answer all the mail that came into Jeopardy! whether it was favorable or unfavorable, and Merv said, You know how I handle the nasty mail? I said no. He just grabbed it and folded it up and crunched it up and threw it in the wastebasket. He said I don’t bother with it.” – Alex Trebek
17. “I did everything – I did newscasts, I did sports, I did dramas.” – Alex Trebek
18. “It’s always tough for caretakers because she has to deal with her worrying about my well-being and also dealing with.… I’m not always the most pleasant person to be around when I’m experiencing severe pain or depression, and she has to tread lightly around me.” – Alex Trebek
19. “I go through these cycles where I read a lot and then watch TV a lot.” – Alex Trebek
20th of 50 Alex Trebek Quotes
20. “The secret to happiness, of course, is not getting what you want; it’s wanting what you get.” – Alex Trebek
21. “I don’t spend any time whatsoever thinking about what might have been.” – Alex Trebek
22. “It’s very important in life to know when to shut up. You should not be afraid of silence.” – Alex Trebek
23. “I’m curious about everything. Even subjects that don’t interest me.” – Alex Trebek
24. “There is reality, and there’s nothing wrong with accepting reality. It’s when you try to distort reality, to maneuver it into accommodating your particular point of view, your particular bigotry, your particular whatever — that’s when you run into problems.” – Alex Trebek
25. “I tried to do my best impression of The Jonas Brothers, but no matter how hard I tried I ended up looking cool!” – Alex Trebek
26. “People say, ‘You look to be in great shape for your age,’ and I guess I am.” – Alex Trebek
27. “People ask me, How would you do as a contestant on the show? And I tell them I would do fairly well among senior citizens, but against a good thirty-year-old, I would have trouble because I cannot recall information as quickly as I used to. You used to say something and I would go, boom, right away, very sharp. Now it’s like, Oh, yes, but wait a minute, uh, uh.” – Alex Trebek
28. “I think what makes ‘Jeopardy!’ special is that among all the quiz and game shows out there, ours tends to encourage learning.” – Alex Trebek
29. “My heart seems to heal, so that speaks well for my future.” – Alex Trebek
30th of 50 Alex Trebek Quotes
30. “I had only been a citizen for two weeks when I received a summons to appear for jury duty!” – Alex Trebek
31. “I have an Apple computer, which I use to play Spider Solitaire and do research on the Internet.” – Alex Trebek
32. “If it weren’t for Jean, I’d have put myself out of this a long time ago.” – Alex Trebek
33. “When I finish as the host of ‘Jeopardy!’ I’m going to go up to Taft in central California. They have a small college there that teaches you about oil drilling.” – Alex Trebek
34. “My dad drank pretty heavily, and he never missed a day of work in his life. So I never looked at drinking as a serious problem, but drugs to me are a serious problem. I think it’s a generational thing. I think older people don’t feel as uncomfortable around drinkers as they do around dopers.” – Alex Trebek
35. “You should never wear a baseball cap when working in close quarters in the attic: You never see that beam above you!” – Alex Trebek
36. “Don’t tell me what you believe in. I’ll observe how you behave and I will make my own determination.” – Alex Trebek
37. “We are all experts in our own little niches.” – Alex Trebek
38. “Originally, I think, I wanted to be an actor. But I got into broadcasting by accident, if you will because I needed money to pay for my college education. I applied for a summer announcing job at a couple of radio stations.” – Alex Trebek
39. “The sun is up in the sky. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to change that. You can’t say, The sun’s not up there, there’s no sky.” – Alex Trebek
40th of 50 Alex Trebek Quotes
40. “The only reason I got into broadcasting was, I needed money to pay for my junior and senior years at college, and they hired me, those fools!” – Alex Trebek
41. “My musical development stopped when Frank Sinatra died.” – Alex Trebek
42. “I believe the ‘Jeopardy!’ test is more difficult than being a contestant on the program.” – Alex Trebek
43. “My life has been a quest for knowledge and understanding, and I am nowhere near having achieved that. And it doesn’t bother me in the least. I will die without having come up with the answers to many things in life.” – Alex Trebek
44. “I would have loved to have a role in the HBO series ‘Deadwood.’ It was Shakespeare in the Old West.” – Alex Trebek
45. “My life is what it is, and I can’t change it. I can change the future, but I can’t do anything about the past.” – Alex Trebek
46. “When you’re in your 30s and actively pursuing a career and a home life, a wife and children, you’re busy doing as opposed to busy thinking. As you get older, even as you don’t have as much time, I think you tend to think more and reflect more on what is happening in your own life.” – Alex Trebek
47. “There comes a time where you have to make a decision as to whether you want to continue with such a low quality of life, or whether you want to just ease yourself into the next level. It doesn’t bother me in the least.” – Alex Trebek
48. “Have you ever met a successful person who wasn’t restless- who was satisfied with where he or she was in life? They want new challenges. They want to get up and go…and that’s one of the reasons they’re successful.” – Alex Trebek
49. “I’m going to keep hosting as long as I can and as long as my skills don’t diminish.” – Alex Trebek
50. “There was one day a few weeks ago when (wife) Jeanie asked me in the morning, ‘How do you feel?’ And I said, ‘I feel like I wanna die.’ It was that bad.” – Alex Trebek
Summary
Thanks for checking out this collection of quotes from Alex Trebek! Don’t forget to share them on social media with your friends and family.
