George Carlin Quotes

When he got loaded, the human cannonball knew there were not many men of his caliber.

I went through the usual stages: imp, rascal, scalawag, whippersnapper. And, of course, after that it's just a small step to full-blown sociopath.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

The whole idea of the pursuit of goods and possessions has completely corrupted the human experience, along with religion, which I think limits the intellect.

But you know, the longer you listen to this abortion debate, the more you hear this phrase "sanctity of life". You've heard that. Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other 'cause God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the land, vengeance is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. "You believe in God?" "No." Boom. Dead. "You believe in God?" "Yes." "You believe in my God? "No." Boom. Dead. "My God has a bigger dick than your God!" Thousands of years. Thousands of years, and all the best wars, too. The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred. Which is fine with me. Hey, any time a bunch of holy people want to kill each other I'm a happy guy.

But don't be giving me all this shit about the sanctity of life. I mean, even if there were such a thing, I don't think it's something you can blame on God. No, you know where the sanctity of life came from? We made it up. You know why? 'Cause we're alive. Self-interest. Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that somehow life is sacred. You don't see Abbott and Costello running around, talking about th

If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea ... does that mean that 1 enjoys it?

There's also way too much religion in the South to be consistent with good mental health.
Still, I love traveling down there, especially when I'm in the mood for a quick trip to the thirteenth century. I'm not someone who buys into all that 'New South' shit you hear; I judge a place by the number of lynchings they've had, overall.

Catholic, which I was until I reached the age of reason

I have a lot of things [in me] that are childlike and innocent and sweet.

I'm in shape. Round is a shape.

They say that instead of cursing the darkness, one should light a candle. Nothing is mentioned, though, about cursing a lack of candles.

When I see a large group of people, I wonder how many of them will eventually require autopsies.

That's the whole meaning of life, isn't it? Trying to find a place for your stuff.

Religion is a self-conferred intellectual decision; it's not something you get at birth and is unchangeable. You're collusive with the religion when you accept it; you have a choice.

Interesting form of murder we come up with: Assassination. We assassinate people who've told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Apparently we are not ready to live together.

I think we overrate ourselves in terms of our abilities and capacities. I mean, just because you can build a really swell bridge doesn't, to my way of thinking, mean that you're an advanced civilization.

Something is wrong. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, crime, torture, corruption and the ice capades. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. This is not what you expect to find on the resume of a supreme being. It's what you expect from an office temp with a bad attitude.

I've been a performer for a long time and I know when people are laughing from their guts, from the inside, and when their tuxedos are laughing.

No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open.

Geologists claim that although the world is running out of oil, there is still a 200-hundred-year supply of brake fluid.

Never give up on an idea simply because it is bad and doesn't work.

I do something about the weather. I stay home.

The best thing about living at the beach is that you only have assholes on three sides of you.

I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.

I became a guy who wanted to be a comedian someday, or a comic actor. The way I put it was, I'll be like Danny Kaye. He was kind of the model I had in mind.

Today, I want to tell you about little Danny Pendejo.

You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

I tell ya, if I hadn't chosen the career of being a performer, I think linguistics would have been a natural area that I'd have loved - to teach it, probably, Language has always fascinated me. There's a genetic inheritance there a good language gene, which I inherited [from my mother and grandfather] and she fostered that in me as he fostered that in her.

The things they don't tell you in schools these days, geez. Have a look at your owners. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice; you have owners. They own you. They own everything.

Hallucinogens are a value changer ... like it or not, it changes your values, it opens up windows (doors of perception.)

Now, some people do this for shock value. Shock is just another uptown word for surprise. Granted it has a different quality to it, but a joke is about surprising someone. I'm a great believer in context. You can joke about anything. I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it and bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did.

We're all fucked. It helps to remember this.

The Golden Gate Bridge should have a long bungee cord for people who aren't quite ready to commit suicide but want to get in a little practice.

One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.

I find that an entertainer is quite content to sit still, and I think an artist always has a little motion, always going somewhere. May not know where it is, but there is some sort of unnamed destination. There is some pulling, some movement. So I just found myself in that category according to my own analysis.

Your home is your refuge.

Sometimes when I'm told to use my own discretion, if no one is looking I'll use someone else's. But I always put it back.

Number one, one, one on wonderful WINO.

What are we going to tell the Intergalactic Council of Ministers the first time one of our teenage mothers threw her newborn baby into a dumpster, huh? How're we gonna explain that to the space people? How are we gonna let them know that our ambassador was only late for the meeting because his breakfast was cold and he had to spend half an hour punching his wife around the kitchen? What are they gonna think when they find out that it's just a local custom that over 80 million women in the Third World have had their clitorises forcibly removed in order to reduce their sexual pleasures so they won't cheat on their husbands? Can't you just sense how eager the rest of the universe is for us to show up? Can't you see them out there?

Whenever you hear the phrase zero tolerance, remember, someone is bullshitting you.

I use the [vulgar] words because apparently these words do not corrupt morally. I'm from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It's a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It's never to shock. I know where it fits, it's never to shock. There's no shock value left in words.

Is there another word for synonym?

When you think about it, 12:15 P.M. is actually 11:75 A.M.

You know what I like about the American form of government? They've worked things out so that you're never far from a 7-Eleven.

If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?

If you take five white guys and put 'em with five black guys, and let 'em hang around together for about a month, and at the end of the month, you'll notice that the white guys are walking and talking and standing like the black guys do. You'll never see the black guys going, "Oh, golly! We won the big game today, yes sir!" But you'll see guys with red hair named Duffy going, "What's happenin'?"

It is said that Indians were sometimes named for the first thing they saw when they were born. Makes you wonder why there aren't more Indians named Hairy Pussy, doesn't it?

Instead of school busing and prayer in schools, which are both controversial, why not a joint solution? Prayer in buses. Just drive these kids around all day and let them pray their fuckn' empty little heads off.

We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little Styrofoam. Maybe. A little Styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

In adolescence you have to separate yourself and establish your identity. So, being very independent anyway, I took charge.

More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason.

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood.

They'll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this f**kin' place. It's a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people: white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on.

I believe myself to be a worthwhile and inventive performer in my own right. [And] I want to be known for what I do best.

These days many politicians are demanding change. Just like homeless people.

I say things that can be defined as prayers. But I don't pray to a power or ask an entity to intercede in the earthly scheme, because I don't believe that happens. But if I see a really unfortunate person in the street, I do pray, yes, though I suppose it's really more like a mantra to ease my own sorrow.

Why do 'slow down' and 'slow up' mean the same thing? Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?

Children should be taught to question everything ... everything they read and everything they hear.

The reason I prefer the sledgehammer to the rapier and the reason I believe in blunt, violent, confrontational forms for the presentation of my ideas is because I see that what's happening to the lives of people is not rapierlike, it is not gentle, it is not subtle. It is direct, hard and violent. The slow violence of poverty, the slow violence of untreated disease. Of unemployment, hunger, discrimination. This isn't the violence of some guy opening fire with an Uzi in a McDonald's and forty people are dead. The real violence that goes on every day, unheard, unreported, over and over, multiplied a millionfold.

President George Bush declared a National Day of Prayer for Peace. This was after he had carefully arranged and started the war.

Once you leave out all the bullshit they teach you in school, life gets really simple.

I was a hip kid. When I saw Bambi it was the midnight show.

Self-expression is a hallmark of an artist, of art, to get something off one's chest, to sing one's song. So that element is present in all art. It is the key to even standing up and saying, "Hey, listen to me." Self-expression can be based on looking at the world and making observations about it.

So I say, "Live and let live." That's my motto. "Live and let live." And anyone who can't go along with that, take him outside and shoot the motherfucker. It's a simple philosophy, but it's always worked in our family.

I like to control my environment, because I feel if I have my physical space in order, then I'm free to dream. So there is some compulsion involved. But the dividend I get is the freedom to be totally disorderly in my dreamworld.

If all our national holidays were observed on Wednesdays, we could wind up with nine-day weekends.

War will end when people stop showing up for it.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

Weather forcast for tonight: dark.

When you quit school at an early age, I think you have a lifelong need to show the world - and maybe yourself - that you're really smart after all.

Jesus was a cross-dresser.

What occurs as you age is an accumulation of information, data, knowledge, and what I'm going to call the matrix of the mind. There's just a rich, textured, field of information and impressions that have been all networked by the brain.

All music is the blues. All of it.

They say if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Well, those are precisely the people who need them!

There are battered husbands. Apparently this happens when the woman is real big, the man is very small, and they each drink a quart of whiskey a day.

Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something, it won't be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up.

Religion cruelly exploits our need to feel connected.

In America, anyone can become president. That's the problem.

If you've got a cat and a leg, you've got a happy cat. If you've got a cat and two legs, you've got a party.

If you want to get rid of counterfeit money, put it in the collection plate at church.

As you swim the river of live, do the breast stroke. It helps to clear the turds from your path.

Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.

If a lobster didn't look like a sci-fi monster, people would be less able to drop him alive into boiling water.

Although the photographer and the art thief were close friends, neither had ever taken the other's picture.

Why are a 'wise man' and a 'wiseguy' opposites?

Everyone appreciates your honesty, until you're honest with them. Then you're an asshole

When you look at Earth from that one picture, the one from space, it's really a rather attractive thing. I have nothing against the planet per se. I root for the big comet or asteroid as a way of cleansing the planet. The comet or asteroid 65 million years ago is probably what gave us our opening to replace the reptiles. The greatest entertainment I have in my life is chronicling internally, not necessarily for the public, the slow dissolution of order.

My money buys me the freedom not to be a member of the corporate structure. And I certainly don't feel guilty or hypocritical about that. The way our economy is set up, if you don't want to be a corporate moron and you don't want to be enfeebled in the streets, you must earn enough to know that you'll never have to go to them for money.

Praying is begging for an unseen deity to alter the laws of nature for someone admittedly unworthy.

TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY. Not true. Today is another day. We have no idea what tomorrow is going to be. It might turn out to be another day, but we can't be sure. If it happens, I'll be the first to say so. But, you know what? By that time, it'll be today again

The straightest line between a straight distance is two points.

Most of the note-taking happens while I'm watching television. It's a broad window on the world, and a lot of things are already established in my mind as things I say, things that I'm interested in, things that are fodder for my [stand-up] machine. And when I see something that relates to one of them, I know it instantly and if it's a further exaggeration and a further addition, or an exception - if it plays into furthering my purpose, I jot it down.

Did you ever eat a whole box of cookies right in a row? Did you ever do that? I don't mean take them into your bedroom or something. I mean open them right up in the kitchen as soon as you get home from the store and eat 'em while you're standing there? Just stare at the toaster while you're eatin' a whole goddamn box of cookies?

Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?

If God had intended us not to masturbate, He would have made our arms shorter.

I don't get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I consider them to be symbols and I leave symbols to the symbol minded.

My father? My father left when I was quite young. Well actually, he was asked to leave. He had trouble metabolizing alcohol.

People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.

Religion - religion, at best - at BEST - is like a lift in your shoe. If you need it for a while, and it makes you walk straight and feel better - fine. But you don't need it forever, or you can become permanently disabled. Religion is like a lift in the shoe, and I say just don't ask me to wear your shoes. And let's not go down and nail lifts onto the natives' feet.