Quotes by George Carlin

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

Age is a hell of a price to pay for wisdom.

Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.

Why are a 'wise man' and a 'wiseguy' opposites?

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

I'm in shape. Round is a shape.

Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so heroic.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

What does a dog do on his day off? He can't lie around that's his job.

No comment is a comment.

I like Florida. Everything is in the 80's. The temperatures, the ages and the IQ's.

An Ideal Husband Life is a near-death experience.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a whole lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me--they're cramming for their final exam.

Never let the brain idle. 'An idle mind is the devil's workshop.' And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.

If crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?

I don't eat lobsters, shrimp, or crawfish because I don't eat anything that looks like I should step on it.

If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is it homeless or naked?

Don't just teach your kids to read, teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.

Some people see the cup as half empty. Some people see the cup as half full. I see the cup as too large.

A lot of gay men stay in the closet because they are interested in fashion.

The planet isn't going anywhere. We are.

We ought to have a diet salad dressing called '500 Islands.'

It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

We're having something different this year for Thanksgiving. Instead of a turkey, we're having a swan. You get more stuffing.

Don't just teach your children to read.
Teach them to question what they read.
Teach then to question everything.

A lot of the people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt.

Think off-center.

If you don't vote, you lose the right to complain.

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood.

Like on the airlines, they say they want to 'pre-board.' Well, what the hell is 'pre board?' What does that mean? To get on before you get on?

A cat will blink when struck with a hammer.

Whoever coined the term Buyer Beware was probably bleeding from the asshole.

I have things that are strident and confrontational, and I have a lot of things that are childlike and innocent and sort of sweet. So, somewhere in between lies the middle of me.

I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loath and despise the groups they identify or belong to.

Whenever you see the word cuisine used instead of the word food, be prepared to pay an additional eighty percent.

I like to control my environment, because I feel if I have my physical space in order, then I'm free to dream. So there is some compulsion involved. But the dividend I get is the freedom to be totally disorderly in my dreamworld.

Being a Dodgers fan led to my first Air Force court-martial, but that's another story.

If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

The phrase surgical strike might be more acceptable if it were common practice to perform surgery with high explosives.

The more syllables a euphemism has, the further divorced from reality it is.

Fussy eater is a euphemism for big pain in the ass.

I was surprised when I started getting old. I always thought it was one of those things that would happen to someone else.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me--they're cramming for their final exam.

People love to admit they have bad handwriting or that they can't do math. And they will readily admit to being awkward: 'I'm such a klutz!' But they will never admit to having a poor sense of humor or being a bad driver.

The sicker you get, the harder it is to remember if you took your medicine.

Anyone who's onstage is going to attract a certain number of misguided people. But I was never very interested in groupies.

Who decides when the applause should die down? It seems like it's a group decision; everyone begins to say to themselves at the same time, Well, okay, that's enough of that.

If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence.

The first obligation I have is to be funny; it's my first impulse and an instinct. I like being funny and finding the jokes.

If voting changed anything, it would be illegal.

The coke made me incredibly horny.

In the Navy, there is no wrong hole. In the Marines, there is always a hole.

If a painting can be forged well enough to fool experts, why is the original so valuable?

They say if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Well, those are precisely the people who need them!

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.

The god excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument.

I think it would be fair and right to use some of my land and wealth for a drug-rehab center or an Indian school.

Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?

We are a nation of sheep, and someone else owns the grass.

I should think it takes a fairly low intellect to draw pleasure from the following activity: hitting a ball with a crooked stick. and then walking after it! An then ..hitting it again!

How can it be a spy satellite if they announce on television that it's a spy satellite?

So I live in Los Angeles, and it's kind of a goofy place. They have an airport named after John Wayne. That ought to explain it. It has a charming kind of superstitious innocence.

I never eat sushi. I have trouble eating things that are merely unconscious.

Tits always look better in a pink sweater.

Is there another word for synonym?

There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.

Property is theft. Nobody owns anything. When you die, it all stays here.

And although I broke a lot of laws as a teenager, I straightened out immediately upon turning eighteen, when I realized the state had a legal right to execute me.

Suddenly, I was thirty, very unhappy entertaining people in their forties, and here came a group of people in their teens and twenties who had similar anti-authority problems and similar dreams and wishes, hopes for mankind. So I gravitated toward them.

I loved the angiogram. They stick a thing in your thigh and it goes all the way up to your heart. Isn't that a thrill? Well, at least the nurse scored thigh.

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game. Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Fuck rational thought.

Tell people an invisible man in the sky created all things, they believe you. Tell them what you've painted is wet, they have to touch it to believe.

I don't have to tell you it goes without saying there are some things better left unsaid. I think that speaks for itself. The less said about it the better.

If it requires a uniform, it's a worthless endeavor.

I grew up in New York wanting to be like those funny men in the movies and on the radio.

Traditional American values: Genocide, aggression, conformity, emotional repression, hypocrisy, and the worship of comfort and consumer goods.

Comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts -- it's a vulgar art, it's one of the people's arts, it's the spoken word, the writing that goes into it is an art form -- it's certainly artistry.

I've never been quarantined. But the more I look around the more I think it might not be a bad idea.

I went to George Washington High School for six months before my 16th birthday, when I could legally quit. That was an even worse experience than the Catholic schools. I mean, they were still teaching fractions. But mostly, I played hooky.

Catholic school gave me the tools to reject the very religion they wanted me to have. They taught me how to think for myself and to be independent.

I always wanted and enjoyed sex, but I never put much importance on scoring or having an athletic sex life. I guess I define myself more by my career and my commitment to a relationship than by my ability to have a lot of chicks or achieve ten orgasms in an evening.

Fuck the drug war. Dropping acid was a profound turning point for me, a seminal experience. I make no apologies for it. More people should do acid. It should be sold over the counter.

Geologists claim that although the world is running out of oil, there is still a 200-hundred-year supply of brake fluid.

Everybody in America is a part of this big herd of cattle being led to the marketplace, not to be sold, which is usual with cattle, but to do the buying. And everyone is branded.

The next time a prostitute solicits your business, ask for the clergyman's rate.

I love it in a movie when they throw a guy off a cliff. I love it even when it's not a movie. No, especially when it's not a movie.

Although the photographer and the art thief were close friends, neither had ever taken the other's picture.

Every day I beat my own previous record for the number of consecutive days I've stayed alive.

You can't fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up.

Language is a tool for concealing the truth. If we could read each other's minds, this would be a horror show.

For an entertainer, part of the thing you do is just style. And the coke did help me get into great runs of pure form.

The angles of my body show you an awful lot. I started doing coke to feel open, but by that time, the hole had opened so wide that I'd fallen through. The body language in those photos tells you everything.

The safest place to be during an earthquake would be in a stationary store.

A crazy person doesn't really lose his mind. It just becomes something more entertaining.

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted?

Golf is an arrogant, elitist game that takes up entirely too much space in this country.

Engineers at General Motors have developed a revolutionary new engine whose only function is to lubricate itself.

I recently bought a book of free verse. For twelve dollars.

I gravitated toward being a funny guy. I liked the radio comedians. I lived in the Golden Age of radio, and the Golden Age of television came along when I was still in my early teens.

My mother didn't get home until about seven most nights and, yes, there was a sense of being very alone after school. She gave me all the proper guidance and influences, but physically, she just couldn't be there.

I think we overrate ourselves in terms of our abilities and capacities. I mean, just because you can build a really swell bridge doesn't, to my way of thinking, mean that you're an advanced civilization.

Catholic, which I was until I reached the age of reason.

My left descending septal branch artery decided to close without consultation with any of my other organs. It happened on Saint Patrick's Day, 1978.

Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers?

Language is the most elementary aspect to our humanness, probably. In addition to that, it's the embodiment, it's the apotheosis of the human experience, it's the way we summarize ourselves.

Baby boomers helped me a great deal in my career. They launched me. They were there for me to sing my song to. And I'm not saying I'm better than anyone, but I think they turned that anti-authority baby boom mentality into their own enemy. Now I identify very closely with their children.

I'll bet there aren't too many people hooked on crack who can play the bagpipes.

Do you know the nicest thing about looking at pictures of a 1950's baseball park? The only people wearing baseball caps are the players.

What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

I profess no belief in God, which by definition is true, especially if we take the accepted definition of God. But to be an atheist is to also have a belief, and have a system, and I don't know that I like that either.

I believe you can joke about anything.

I was never a pipe or bong man. That's California stuff. I was an Eastern roller.

In high school, when I first heard of entropy, I was attracted to it immediately. They said that in nature all systems are breaking down, and I thought, What a wonderful thing; perhaps I can make some small contribution to this process, myself.

Cancer research is a growth industry.

We are all precancerous.

It's all bullshit, folks and it's bad for ya.

Bullshit is truly the American soundtrack.

Don't just teach your children to read…
Teach them to question what they read.
Teach them to question everything.

Cocaine was different. It kept saying, You haven't had enough. I became an abuser almost instantly.

One of the effects it cocaine had on my personality -- my moods, my behaviors -- was that it inhibited me a lot. It kind of took possibilities out of my world, and made the focus of things very narrow.

Eventually, alas, I realized the main purpose of buying cocaine is to run out of it.

Every time you use the phrase all my life it has a different meaning.

What do dogs do on their day off? Can't lie around -- that's their job!

Once you leave the womb, conservatives don't care about you until you reach military age. Then you're just what they're looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

Military cemeteries around the world are packed with brainwashed dead soldiers who were convinced God was on their side. America prays for God to destroy our enemies. Our enemies pray for God to destroy us. Somebody's gonna be disappointed! Somebody's wasting their time! Could it be.. everyone?

People have material needs, but you don't need a deodorant for every different day of the week. You don't need four hundred varieties of mustard. This is what I call too many choices. There are too many choices in America.

Let's not have a double standard. One standard will do just fine.

Do you remember Barbara Bush? I call her the silver douchebag.

Because Brenda Carlin had a drinking problem along with the coke, she had to hit bottom first. Most alcoholics do. And for her, bottom was an automobile accident that almost landed her in jail.

If no one knows when a person is going to die, how can we say he died prematurely?

It's a keep your fingers crossed business, the entertainment business.

Why is there such controversy about drug testing? I know plenty of guys who'd be willing to test any drug they can come up with.

It's depressing to see blacks wanting to dive into the mainstream of American commercial life. They come from a magnificent African culture based on aesthetics, and they all want to become fort builders like the vicious people who originally enslaved them.

A flag is supposed to represent everything that a country does. It doesn't only represent the good things. If you burn the flag, you're burning the flag for what you perceive to be the bad things the country has done. it's only a symbol. It's only a piece of cloth.

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?

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.