Quotes by George Carlin (Page 2 of 4)

There are women named Faith, Hope, Joy, and Prudence. Why not Despair, Guilt, Rage, and Grief? It seems only right. 'Tom, I'd like you to meet the girl of my dreams, Tragedy.' These days, Trajedi.

When people asked me, Do you get high to go onstage? I could never understand the question. I mean, I'd been high since eight that morning.

The enjoyment has been diminishing. Now, there's no question that it's sort of fun to get high.

Y'ever notice how you never seem to get laid on Thanksgiving? I think it's because all the coats are on the bed.

The older you get, the better you realize you were.

Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

I've never seen a homeless guy with a bottle of Gatorade.

Future historians will be able to study at the Jimmy Carter Library, the Gerald Ford Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, and the Bill Clinton Adult Bookstore.

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

I'm kinda like herpes, I just keep coming back.

I've just completed a five-year period that can perhaps best be called a breathing spell. A time of getting my health back and gathering my strength. That time also included incredible cocaine abuse, a heart attack and my wife's recovery from both alcoholism and cocaine abuse.

A scary dream makes your heart beat faster. Why doesn't the part of your brain that controls your heartbeat realize that another part of your brain is making the whole thing up? Don't these people communicate?

I'm not a person who thinks they can have it all, but I certainly feel that with a bit of effort and guile I should be able to have more than my fair share.

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

Regarding local residents attempting to ban sex shops from their neighborhoods: You show me a parent who says he's worried about his child's innocence and I'll show you a homeowner trying to maintain equity.

If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?

They mention that it's a nonstop flight. Well, I must say I don't care for that sort of thing. Call me old fashioned, but I insist that my flight stop. Preferably at an airport.

What I hated most was seeing those priests and brothers getting so much pleasure out of inflicting pain. I wondered what was wrong with them.

To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated, but not be able to say it.

Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people.

I'm tired of hearing about innocent victims. It's fiction, If you live on this planet you're guilty, period, f*** you, next case, end of report. Your birth certificate is proof of guilt.

I set out to become a comedian, and I said in order to do that the first thing I'll do is become a disc jockey and know my pop music. I like it, my voice is good, and I can start out getting confidence without an audience in front of me.

I went to the Missing Persons Bureau but no one was there.

That invisible hand of Adam Smith seems to offer an extended middle finger to an awful lot of people.

The mayfly lives only one day. And sometimes it rains.

Leftovers make you feel good twice. First, when you put it away, you feel thrifty and intelligent: 'I'm saving food!' Then a month later when blue hair is growing out of the ham, and you throw it away, you feel really intelligent: 'I'm saving my life!'

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

Some people think that words can injure the psyche or the moral fiber. And they really can't.

If the reason for climbing Mt. Everest is that it's hard to do, why does everyone go up the easy side?

As powerful as anyone may claim God to be, somehow he always needs money.

It used to be cars had cool names: Dart, Hawk, Fury, Cougar, Firebird, Hornet, Mustang, Barracuda. Now we have Elantra, Altima, Acura, Lumina, Sentra, Corolla, Maxima, Tercel. Further proof that America has lost its edge.

I just try to find targets I feel something about and express it my way.

If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

Sometimes, when I was really loaded, I'd sit on the floor and sort out every nut and bolt in the house. It was just sheer insanity. And often there'd be speed in the cut, so I was a speed freak, too.

People always tell me Have a nice day. Well what if I don't want to? What if I want to have a crappy day?

Matt 13:57. Then Jesus told them, 'A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family.' The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?

Sun worship is fairly simple. There's no mystery, no miracles, no pageantry, no one asks for money, there are no songs to learn, and we don't have a special building where we all gather once a week to pare compare clothing.

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.

Pardon me I've got nothing to say.

Political discourse has been reduced to Where's the beef? Read my lips, and Make my day. Where are the assassins when we really need them?

I did LSD and peyote in the late Sixties, before I got into cocaine. That was concurrent with my change from a straight comic to the album and counterculture period, and those drugs served their purpose. They helped open me up.

You know, if a drug has anything going for it at all, it should be self-limiting. It should tell you when you've had enough. Acid and peyote were that way for me.

Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness. Laugh.. apologize.. let go of what you can't change.

One of the more pretentious political self-descriptions is 'Libertarian.' People think it puts them above the fray. It sounds fashionable, and to the uninitiated, faintly dangerous. Actually, it's just one more bullshit political philosophy.

Pacifism is a nice idea but it can get you killed. We're not there yet. Evolution is slow, small pox is fast.

Bowling is not a sport because you have to rent the shoes.

If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed.

Children are not our future, and I can prove it with my usual, flawless logic. Children can't be our future, because by the time the future arrives, they won't be children anymore, so blow me!

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?

Sometimes a fireman will go to great strenuous lengths to save a raccoon that's stuck in a drainpipe and then go out on the weekend and kill several of them for amusement.

If Helen Keller had psychic ability, would you say she had a fourth sense? What year did Jesus think it was?

I really haven't seen this many people in one place since they took group photographs of all the criminals and lawbreakers in the Ronald Reagan administration.

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.

Two things happened. The creative side of my career was harmed. When I'd sit down and write under the influence of coke, the ratio of pages kept to pages thrown out declined drastically. But onstage, when rapping about a feeling I already owned, I would sometimes get a burst of eloquence.

When will all the rhetorical questions end?

I've set my own rules to live by. The first one is: 'Never believe ANYthing the government says.'

Do you think Sammy Davis ate Junior Mints?

If everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is gonna die...where does the sacred part come in?

How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelette?

Conservatives want live babies so they can train them to be dead soldiers.

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

Next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you're in a science fiction movie. And whisper, 'The creature is regenerating itself.'

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

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

It's the old American Double Standard, ya know: Say one thing, do somethin' different. And of course this country is founded on the double standard. That's our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.

Can placebos cause side effects? If so, are the side effects real?

Think of how strange we'd look if all the cuts, burns, scrapes, bruises, scratches, bumps, gashes, and scabs we ever had suddenly reappeared on our bodies at the same time.

If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain.

I went straight from shenanigans to crimes against humanity.

The secret of success is doing something you love, doing it well and being recognized for it.

They're only words. You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth, even if it's an unpleasant truth.

Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

Surround yourself with what you love.

Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

Have you ever noticed that the lawyer always smiles more than the client?

I always knew I could hold people's attention and make them laugh every 30 or 40 seconds, and I got approval and attention for that, so the behavior was reinforced. Later, that became an important skill on the street corner.

In terms of coke, the only money I ever thought about was that dollar bill I had stuck up my nose.

First I was a mimic. Practically from the moment I began talking, I did impersonations of the people in my neighborhood -- the storekeepers, the policemen, my teachers.

You can't be the fastest gun in town forever. There comes a time when you're not the golden boy, and you have to go off somewhere and figure yourself out.

If you ask me, we could do with a little less motivation. -- The people who are causing all the trouble seem highly motivated to me. -- Serial killers, stock swindlers, drug dealers, Christian Republicans.

The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice, there are two political parties, there are a handful insurance companies, there are six or seven information centers.. but if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors. Because you have the illusion of choice!

Religion is like drugs, it destroys the thinking mind.

The Class Clown album was done totally sober. I'd realized what a hell I'd made for myself and I cleaned up completely for three months. You can hear the clarity of my thinking and of my speech on that album.

My father and mother separated when I was two months old.

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

I often wonder how different the world would be if Hitler had not been turned down when he applied to art school.

Does killing time damage eternity?

I knew a transsexual guy whose only ambition is to eat, drink, and be Mary.

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.

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.

To me, smoking pot meant sitting with a newspaper on my legs, rolling the seeds down, pulling the twigs out and finally producing a perfectly cylindrical, absolutely wonderful joint that you either locked at both ends or pinched off, or pinched at one end and left open at the other.

I think of shock as kind of an uptown form of surprise. Comedy is filled with surprise, so when I cross a line... I like to find out where the line might be and then cross it deliberately, and then make the audience happy about crossing the line with me.

Why do they bother with a suicide watch when someone is on death row? Keep an eye on this guy. We're gonna kill him, and we don't want him to hurt himself.

At best, God can be viewed as nothing more than an uncaring incompetent father-figure.

The highly motivated people in society are the ones causing all the trouble. It's not the lazy unmotivated folks sitting in front of a TV eating potato chips who bother anyone.

As soon as someone is identified as an unsung hero, he no longer is.

When I was a kid, if a guy got killed in a western movie I always wondered who got his horse.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?

Number one, one, one on wonderful WINO.

Grass marijuana probably helped me as much as it hurt me. Especially as a performer. When you're high, it's easy to kid yourself about how clever certain mediocre pieces of material are. But, on the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way.

Grass probably helped me as much as it hurt me. Especially as a performer. When you're high, it's easy to kid yourself about how clever certain mediocre pieces of material are. But, on the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way.

Comedy is a socially acceptable form of hostility and aggression. That is what comics do, stand the world upside down.

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.

Every time you're exposed to advertising in America you're reminded that this country's most profitable business is still the manufacture, packaging, distribution, and marketing of bullshit. High-quality, grade-A, prime-cut, pure American bullshit.

Anger is a handy term and words are tricky, as we know. What one man perceives as anger, another person -- in my case the deliverer of material -- is, Don't you see it, don't you see how badly you're doing? It's like shaking a child -- which you're not supposed to do.

The women who line up at a comic's dressing-room door are not what you'd call your class groupies.

It's way beyond ironic that a place called the Holy Land is the location of the fiercest, most deeply felt hatred in the world. And it makes for wonderful theater.

Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.

War is rich old men protecting their property by sending middle class and lower class young men off to die. It always has been.

If I ever lose my mind I hope some honest person will find it and take it to Lost and Found.

You're really spread out now, you've got stuff all over the WORLD! You've got stuff at home, stuff in storage, stuff in Honolulu, stuff in Maui, stuff in your pockets...supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain.

Israeli murderers are called commandos, Arab commandos are called terrorists.

God bless the homicidal maniacs. They make life worthwhile.

Hard work is a misleading term. physical effort and long hours do not constitute hard work. hard work is when someone pays you to do something you'd rather not be doing. anytime you'd rather be doing something other than the thing you're doing...you're doing hard work.

The Human Species could have been great but instead we became satisfied with lights on our tennis shoes.

Before they give you a lethal injection, they swab your arm with alcohol. It's true. Well, they don't want you to get an infection, and you can see their point. They don't want some guy go to hell and be sick.

Regarding jam sessions: Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.

Life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death.

When it comes to bullshit...bigtime, major league bullshit...you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims...religion.

A pear is a failed apple.

I have this real moron thing I do? It's called thinking.

If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?

Nothing you see on the Internet is mine unless it comes from one of my albums, books, HBO specials, or appeared on my website.

My advice: Just keep movin' straight ahead. Every now and then you find yourself in a different place.

My grandfather, mother and father were gifted verbally, and my mother passed that along to me. She always made sure I was conscious of language and words.