Quotes by George Carlin
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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.

When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?

So I want to thank the Pentagon, the Soviet Union and the military-industrial complex from the bottom of my heart. Without them, I could never have become the man I am today.

I always have these little internal monologues. You'll get used to them.

I literally didn't know my father. My mother had been a secretary, and after she and my father split, she went back to work for an advertising executive. So my older brother and I were latch-door kids. We went home for lunch and after school by ourselves.

When I first heard the song Don't worry -- be happy I realized it was exactly the kind of mindless philosophy that Americans would respond to. It would make a great national anthem along with Me first.

The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things -- bad language and whatever -- it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition.

With humans it's abortion, but with chickens it's an omelet.

Nothing rectifies out-of-control market failures like a healthy dose of

government intervention and mountains of bureaucracy.

Never underestimate the role pretension plays when it comes to creating euphemistic language.

If a movie is described as a romantic comedy, you can usually find me next door playing pinball.

There are only two places in the world: over here and over there.

When you visualize the recent past, do you see it as being somewhere over on the left?

No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you're screwed because it's all fixed and rigged. There is a club and you ain't in it.

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

Why do they bother saying raw sewage? Do some people actually cook that stuff?

When I got out of high school they retired my jersey, but it was for hygiene and sanitary reasons.