Lenny Bruce Quotes

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

She was Bloomingdale's, not Victoria Secret. She was vanilla, not peach. She was Paul Reiser, not Lenny Bruce. This was not my kind of chick. ~ Christopher Paul Meyer

People are leaving the church and going back to God. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

My dad was a big fan of comedy. He wanted to be a stand-up. He loved Lenny [Bruce]. He also loved Lord Buckley and jazz and stuff. He was a hipster. My parents were kind of beatnik-y, you know, for Salt Lake City. But my humor, I think, came from wanting to disarm people before they hit me. ~ Judd Apatow

Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich. ~ Lenny Bruce

On the comedy side of what I love as a filmmaker are Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and Eddie Murphy; those are my favorites. ~ David Dobkin

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

I want to perform an unnatural act. ~ Lenny Bruce

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

Lenny Bruce described flamenco as being an art form wherein a dancer applauds his own ass. ~ David Rakoff

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

When I was younger, I listened to the greats: Winters, Mel and Carl, Nichols and May, Pryor, Carlin, Klein, Berman and lots of Lenny Bruce albums. But once I started doing fairly well, I didn't want to hear anybody's jokes or premises. ~ Richard Lewis

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

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

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

My idea as far as comedy goes has always been to push the limits of what's acceptable for a woman to do or say or be. My hero in that would be Lenny Bruce, who teaches us that words have no meaning. It's the intent behind them that is what's important. ~ Lea DeLaria

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

Life is a four-letter word. ~ Lenny Bruce

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! ~ Lenny Bruce

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

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

In my opinion, Lenny Bruce was more of an influence on Zappa's satirical lyric's than anyone that I know of. ~ Jimmy Carl Black

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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 ... ~ Lenny Bruce

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

Satire is tragedy plus time. ~ Lenny Bruce

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

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

There are never enough 'I love you's. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

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

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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! ~ Lenny Bruce

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

The thing is, all my heroes were junkies. Lenny Bruce, Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Miles Davis, Hubert Selby, Jr ... These guys were cool. They were committed. They would not have been caught dead doing an ALF episode. ~ Jerry Stahl

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. ~ Lenny Bruce

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

I agree that comedy does a good job - and is often about - stepping over the line - Lenny Bruce, etc. - and that this is important for a lot of poets too. I guess I feel like there has to be depth. ~ Rachel Zucker

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

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

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

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce - to which in fact he was once taken.
Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne - who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues. ~ David Markson

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

... 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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

I am influenced by every second of my waking hour. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

Lenny Bruce is a very moral man trying to improve the world and trying to make audiences think. ~ Dorothy Kilgallen

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce - my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions - the absurdity of the thing. ~ Billy Connolly

I'd heard that Lenny Bruce used a lot of profanity and obscenities in his act, and I was curious. ~ Sheldon Harnick

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

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

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. ~ Lenny Bruce

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

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence. ~ Bruce Catton

Made my bed and here I lie, try to hold my head up high. Lying to myself sometimes, bad decisions but I, I won't cry. ~ Bruce Hornsby

[Her eyes] were like two perfect emeralds stuck in the middle of a large sausage pizza. ~ Bruce Newbold

Recently SCHISMATRIX became my first novel to come out in Finland. Perhaps there's a quality in a good translation that can't be captured with the original. ~ Bruce Sterling

Across generations, wariness of new individuals, groups, and ideas was built into the circuits of the human brain's alarm response because those who had this wariness were more likely to survive to reproduce. It was just safer to assume danger- and expect the worst- than to count on the kindness of strangers. ~ Bruce D. Perry

We are told that talent creates opportunity, yet it is desire that creates talent. ~ Bruce Lee

Cease negative mental chattering. If you think a thing is impossible, you'll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed. ~ Bruce Lee

Nothing surpasses the beauty and elegance of a bad idea. ~ Craig Bruce

I watch the confusion of friends all numb with love moving like stray dogs to the anthem of night long conversations of pulsing rhythms and random voltage voices in spite of themselves graceful as these raindrops creeping spermlike across the car window. ~ Bruce Cockburn

Badlands, you got to live it everyday, let the broken hearts stand as the price you've got to pay. ~ Bruce Springsteen

Listen, Bruce Lee fought out of anger. That's why they call it the 'Fists of Fury.' Michael Jackson danced with fury. I do stand up out of fury. I'm not mad at anybody. I'm not mad at any human being because I'm a human being. ~ Tracy Morgan

Bridges become frames for looking at the world around us. ~ Bruce Jackson

If someone steals your password, you can change it. But if someone steals your thumbprint, you can't get a new thumb. The failure modes are very different. ~ Bruce Schneier

Wear modest, clean clothing. Your clothing doesn't need to be new and [it] should have some fashion of course, but [it] should be clean, modest, and neat. Be dignified in your outward manner and in your inward morality. ~ Bruce R. McConkie

You do have a Dream. It's part of what it means to be human, created in the image of God. ~ Bruce Wilkinson

Bruce McGill and Sasha Alexander are regulars on the show. That shows that it's not just a typical procedural show. We have these actors because they can come in and actually act, and show the different colors of actual people. No person is just one color. No person is just who they are at their job, 24/7. That was really what I was excited about. ~ Angie Harmon

History teaches that nations do not learn from history. ~ Bruce Fein

I do have two data identities. I have my name, Bruce Sterling, which is my public name under which I write novels. I also have my other name, which is my legal name under which I own property and vote. ~ Bruce Sterling

Everyone wants to learn how to win, but no one wants to learn how to accept defeat. ~ Bruce Lee

You write about what you love and you write about things you're trying to make sense of. ~ Bruce Springsteen

I always feel it's necessary to look at my images from two distances. Here is my criterion: If I can look at it from a distance and then come up close but find nothing more to see, it's printed too large. It's not giving me any new information when I come up to it. ~ Bruce Barnbaum

I got interested in decathlon because a coach that I had was a big fan of Bruce Jenner, and he just saw the ability in me - but when it came down to it, I knew my best chance at a college scholarship would be in track and field. ~ Dan O'Brien

If something is free, you're not the customer; you're the product. ~ Bruce Schneier

Yes, I play computer games. I think you've got to embrace the latest technology. For someone to dismiss games as not important would be the same as saying the Internet is not important. ~ Bruce Feirstein

I'm a very bad impersonator so I can't even remember if I've ever done a sports person. I mean, I think I was Bruce Jenner once but I don't think I said anything in the sketch I was just sitting there in a like a bronze track suit. No dialogue. They don't trust me with dialogue. ~ Will Forte

For a long time I was embarrassed to say I was a 'B' movie actor, ... But now that I see what Hollywood's putting out, I realized 'B' actually means 'better.' ~ Bruce Campbell

It started twelve and went on until twelve. I never had to buy a drink all day! ~ Michael Owen Bruce

In terms of age, I think I've covered about as wide a range as is possible, having written everything from picture books to early chapter books to middle grade novels to YA to one adult novel - and having been editor and lead writer for a magazine for retired people! ~ Bruce Coville

I was a good dog. I had fulfilled my purpose. Lessons I had learned from being feral had taught me how to escape and how to hide from people when it was necessary, scavenging for food from trash containers. Being with Ethan had taught me love and had taught me my most important purpose, which was taking care of my boy. Jakob and Maya had taught me Find, Show, and, most important of all, how to save people, and it was all of these things, everything I had learned as a dog, that had led me to find Ethan and Hannah and to bring them both together. I understood it now, why I had lived so many times. I had to learn a lot of important skills and lessons, so that when the time came I could rescue Ethan, not from the pond but from the sinking despair of his own life. The ~ W. Bruce Cameron