Mort Sahl Quotes

This matter of two sides to every question is bad logic and bad practice: sometimes there are no sides; sometimes there are a hundred.

Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.

Remember that no matter how selfish, how cruel, how unfeeling you have been today, every time you take a breath, you make a flower happy.

I took a course at Cal once called Statistical Analysis. And there was a guy in the course who used to make up all of his computations and he never used Sigma. He used his own initials. 'Cause he was the standard deviation.

I watched Ken Burns' Civil War series on PBS. My favorite segment is when Bob Hope entertains the troops at Gettysburg.

I went to computer class with my Dell and I was bullied by a guy with a Mac.

We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were.

I don't believe in good people and bad people. I believe in the better parts of people.

You know me, I love lost causes.

Comedians have to challenge the power. Comedians should be dangerous and devastating - and funny. That's the hardest part.

Bush is the face on the can. But who canned that soup?

I've arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago. Because when I die, I want to still remain active politically.

If you can't join them, beat them.

I found people looked better when they laughed

The fact is that you can't have a good relationship with a girl who hasn't settled things with her father.

We all know that America is the worst country in the world, except for all the others.

Will Rogers ... used to come out with a newspaper and pretend he was a
yokel criticizing the intellectuals who ran the government. I come out with
a newspaper and pretend I'm an intellectual making fun of the yokels
running the government.

I'm not a liberal, I'm a radical!

There's a danger our fiscal bankruptcy might overtake our moral bankruptcy.

People tell me there are a lot of guys like me, which doesn't explain why I'm lonely.

I made the mistake early in my career, when I moved to Hollywood, of being attracted to actresses. I used to go out exclusively with actresses and other female impersonators.

New book on Malcolm X says we don't know how he was killed. Want to bring in the FBI. Maybe they were in already.

I took benzedrine - I got clairvoyance. With benzedrine you can have a very wide view of the world, like you can decide the destiny of man and other pressing problems, such as which is the left sock?

There are Russian spies here now. And if we're lucky, they'll steal some of our secrets and they'll be two years behind.

Nixon's the kind of guy that if you were drowning fifty feet off shore, he'd throw you a thirty foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way.

The beat generation is a coffeehouse full of people expectantly looking at their watches waiting for the beat generation to come on. *1958

Now that Obama is at war in a 3rd country, does that mean he has to give back his Nobel Peace Prize?

There were four million people in the American Colonies and we had Jefferson and Franklin. Now we have over 200 million and the two top guys are Clinton and Dole. What can you draw from this? Darwin was wrong!

Those who the gods would make rich and famous on TV, they first drive mad.

One reason to keep going is that the country was given to us as a sacred charge. It is, as Stephen Vincent Benet says in 'the Devil and Daniel Webster,' not the only place that created free man- but... Read More its a place that demands that we decide what to do with out freedom. You can only punish yourself, That's the existential view. I don't think there's any reward beyond participating, beyond being here. And the antithesis of reward is punishment, and the only punishment that can come is self-inflicted. I remain optimistic. Whether or not the optimism is justified, I don't know. I want to stay around for the third act.

You know what I want you to do? I want you to blow out the candle and curse the darkness.

Most people past college age are not atheists. It's too hard to be in society, for one thing. Because you don't get any days off. And if you're an agnostic you don't know whether you get them off or not.

I used to go to two movies every week for the Saturday matinee when I was a kid.

When Obama ran, he said, We can change the world! The world: can you change it back?!

Obama is running again for spite.

A conservative doesn't want anything to happen for the first time; a liberal feels it should happen, but not now.

You haven't lived until you've died in California

Everything I tell you is true, but this is factual.

Obama says his recreation consists of reading the Constitution ... looking for a loophole.

If you were the only person left on the planet, I would have to attack you. That's my job.

Television is never more false than when it's openly sincere.

Remember when movies were just good or bad, before auteurs, film festivals, and guys from USC who were the first to shoot underwater?

I'm a radical, and I always have been.

In the forties, to get a girl you had to be a GI or a jock. In the fifties, to get a girl you had to be Jewish. In the sixties, to get a girl you had to be black. In the seventies, to get a girl you've got to be a girl.

A Yuppie is someone who believes it's courageous to eat in a restaurant that hasn't been reviewed yet.

I never met a man I didn't like until I met Will Rogers.

Women want their men to be cops. They want you to punish them and tell them what the limits are. The only thing that women hate worse from a man than being slapped is when you get on your knees and say you're sorry.

Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.

If you maintain a consistent political position long enough, you'll eventually be accused of treason.

Hillary's explanation of the Libyan action to Congress was so good, I wonder who explained it to her?