George Carlin Quotes

I used to be Irish Catholic. Now I'm an American - you know, you grow.

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

It was just a compulsion. In fact, I soon realized that the only thing I really enjoyed was the actual snorting.

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

If you nail a tool shed closed, how do you put the hammer away?

I think it keeps the child alive in me. There's a thrill when you steal something in plain view of other people.

An art thief is a man who takes pictures.

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.

What exactly is "midair"? Is there some other part of air besides the "mid" part?

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.

Without the laughs, the audience wouldn't be there at all, so in that sense, yes, I am a comedian.

I have a lot of things [in me] that are childlike and innocent and sweet.

We now buy watches primarily for their looks, price, or additional functions. The fact that they tell time seems lost.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

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

None of the Christian religions do [interest me]. They're all outer-directed.

There are actually people who go out and re-fight these battles. You know what I say? Use real ammunition! You just might raise the intelligence level of the American gene pool!

It's the American view that everything has to keep climbing: productivity, profits, even comedy.

I think the trend to control speech - and therefore thought - continues. Because of the freer flow of information now, there's more on the side of free thought.

Where do we get our values from?

More people write poetry than read it.

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.

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

People tell you to have a safe trip, as if you have some control over it.

Suppose I could shoot myself in the mouth, but what if I miss? People will laugh at me.

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.

Running isn't a sport because anyone can do it. Anything we can all do can't be a sport. I can run, you can run. My mother can run, you don't see her on the cover of Sports Illustrated do you?

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?

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

I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond!

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

When I'm not actually doing my work, I'm planning it or thinking about it or reading things that on some level are transformed into performance fantasies. I have no active interests.

The dividend I get [from my compulsion] is the freedom to be totally disorderly in my dreamworld.

Language always gives you away.

Whereas your blackness, ethnicity, homosexuality is something that might be genetic, I can't touch that, and I have no right.

Leadership camp? Isn't that where Hitler went?

I became a guy who wanted to be a comedian someday, or a comic actor. The way I put it was, I'll be like Danny Kaye. He was kind of the model I had in mind.

I think self-expression is present at all times, and whether or not you're talking about the outside world or your responses to it depends on the moment and the subject.

And, of course, the funniest food: "kumquats". I don't even bring them home anymore. I sit there laughing and they go to waste.

People are dreaming if they think they have rights. They've never had rights. There's no such thing.

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

I'd say pot has been a break-even proposition for me.

Don Ho can sign autographs 3.4 times faster than Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

When you're high, it's easy to kid yourself about how clever certain mediocre pieces of material are.

The ritual was very important to me: cleaning the pot, rolling the pot.

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

I'm a believer that things happen. Fate is what happens.

I quit school in ninth grade, even though I was good at the studies. I knew I didn't need school for what I wanted.

If a drug has anything going for it at all, it should be self-limiting. It should tell you when you've had enough.

My father? My father left when I was quite young. Well actually, he was asked to leave. He had trouble metabolizing alcohol.