Doug Larson

Here’s a biographical sketch and some of the best-known quotes from Doug Larson:

Biography & Career

Full name: Douglas Lincoln Larson
Born: February 10, 1926, in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin
Died: April 1, 2017
Larson was a newspaper columnist and editor.
From 1953 to 1964, he worked at the Door County Advocate.
From 1964 to 1988, he wrote a daily column, “Doug’s Dugout,” for the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
His column was syndicated under the title Senator Soaper Says, and in 1980 he took over authorship of that syndicated feature (originally by Bill Vaughn).

Larson was especially beloved for short, witty aphorisms and observations about everyday life, often with a humorous or ironic twist.

His writing often displayed concise wit, observational humor, and gentle wisdom.
He had a knack for turning simple truths, wordplay, or commonplace observations into quotable lines.
Many of his sayings circulate widely on quote sites and social media, often detached from the original column context.

Here are several well-known quotations attributed to Doug Larson (with typical attributions across quote collections):

“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.”
“A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.”
“If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles.”
“Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.”
“The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.”
“A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.”
“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.”
“Never doubt the courage of the French. They were the ones who discovered that snails are edible.”