Lenny Bruce Quotes

There are never enough 'I love you's.

Once you take away the struggle for food, clothing and shelter, work is the one four letter word that offends everyone.

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people!

If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone.

Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.

You got to pay your dues to get the joke. Besides, laughter is cheap and very portable. If there's a pogrom, or they're blaming you for the plague, nothing is easier to pack than a sense of humor.

To say whatever nonsense comes into your head without any repercussions has got to be a bigger high than heckling a movie screen in a darkened theater.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

You can't do anything with anybody's body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person - you can do only one thing to make it dirty: kill it. Hiroshima was dirty.

Life is a four-letter word.

That's where the conflict starts. We all want for a wife a combination Sunday school teacher and a $500-a-night hooker.

I want to perform an unnatural act.

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.

If you're from New York and you're Catholic, you're still Jewish. If you're from Butte Montana and you're Jewish, you're still goyisch. The Air Force is Jewish, the Marine Corps dangerous goyisch. Rye Bread is Jewish, instant potatoes, scary goyisch. Eddie Cantor is goyisch, George Jessel is goyisch-Coleman Hawkins is Jewish.

Never tell. Not if you love your wife ... In fact, if your old lady walks in on you deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and she'll believe it: "I'm tellin' ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around her neck 'Lay On Top Of Me Or I'll Die.' " I didn't know what I was goin' to do ...

Koolaid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish, and, as you know, white bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes - goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are very Jewish - very Jewish cake. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is goyish. Lime soda is very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that Jews won't go near them.

Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from that tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is - One Who Killed Our Lord. And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.

Trying to figure things out was my gig. Without the human condition, there's no struggle, no pain and that means no laughter.

Marijuana is rejected all over the world. Damned. In England heroin is alright for out-patents, but marijuana? They'll put your ass in jail. I wonder why that is? The only reason could be: To Serve the Devil - Pleasure! Pleasure, which is a dirty word in Christian culture.

The American Constitution was not written to protect criminals; it was written to protect the government from becoming criminals.

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

Dig: I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor's goyish. B'nai B'rith is goyish; Hadassah, Jewish.
If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be goyish even if you're Jewish.

I've been accused of bad taste, and I'll go down to my grave accused of it and always by the same people, the ones who eat in restaurants that reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

If you're going to stop masturbating, you can't taper off. You've got to quit, cold jerky!

There's always a down side with any freedom. It's not just homosexual freedom, but any sexual freedom comes at a price, and that is usually art.

If there was absolute freedom, people would run over babies and charge admission.

I'm sure that half the buzz from smoking grass was the fact that it was so illegal.

Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich.

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.

Once you sleep on feathers you can't go back to sleeping on the floor.

TV is just advertising for your live gig, so I'm playing whichever show is gonna get me the biggest crowd.

Certain things are complete superstition and have no validity at all in the Bible. Yeah. They're just the antithesis of everything that is correct intellectually.

The reason I'm in this business, I assume all performers are
it's Look at me, Ma! It's acceptance, you know
Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma. And if your mother watches, you'll show off till you're exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!

If something about the human body disgusts you, the fault lies with the manufacturer.

Let me tell you the truth: The truth is what is. And what should be is a fantasy a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago.

I was surprised when Nixon passed the test and showed up in heaven, but, I guess Hitler threw off the curve for our century.

If you can't say "Fuck" you can't say, "Fuck the government.

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it ... try to fake three laughs in an hour
ha ha ha ha ha
they'll take you away, man. You can't.

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Once the country was settled and built, the bosses changed the order from a stack of educated workers to a barrel of minimum wage lottery dreamers.

I am influenced by every second of my waking hour.

Every group needs a comedian. A comic who is politically incorrect at the Berkeley campus might slay them at a Klan rally.

You know there's no crooked politicians. There's never a lie because there is never any truth.

When homosexuals were repressed, you got Tennessee Williams. Today's tolerance got you Hilton Perez.

There's a lot of money in wars, except in the war on poverty. Can't make any bread helping the poor.

I'm not a comedian. I'm Lenny Bruce.

People are leaving the church and going back to God.

Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.

A lot of people say to me, 'Why did you kill Christ?' I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know.

You put a guy on a desert island, he'll do it to mud, a chicken, a barrel, anything, a knothole.

Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish even if you are Jewish.

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.

Satire is tragedy plus time.

... Catholicism is like Howard Johnson, and what they have are these franchises and they give all these people different franchises in the different countries but they have one government, and when you buy the Howard Johnson franchise you can apply it to the geography - whatever's cool for that area - and then you, you know, pay the bread to the main office.

I tried the religion scam in Miami, so I know how hard that gig is. But, if you can get it to work, starting your own religion is a license to print money.

You got a million drug laws now because the bosses figured there was more money in putting people in jail than taxing something anyone can grow on a window sill.

Every group, every system has a set of values and morals and when you get outside those, then the alarms ring. I was politically incorrect to 95% of the country; luckily my 5% had the bread to come see me.