I.B. George Quotes

No one ever says, 'It's only a game' when their team is winning.

Art, music, and philosophy are merely poignant examples of what we might have been had not the priests and traders gotten hold of us.

It's harder to be funny from the position of power.

Everyone should try to scratch their name on the bomb of life.

I don't understand the problem with paroling Charles Manson? I say set him free and let him get on with his work. I have a long list of celebrities I'd be glad to share with him.

I'll tell you a little secret about the Blues: it's not enough to know which notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played.

You never see a smiling runner.

A cat will blink when struck with a hammer.

Why do we park on driveways and drive on parkways? Just to be silly!

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

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.

Rhetoric paints with a broad brush.

Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin' ready to hang himself.

I hope we're not just human garbage drifting toward a big sewer. But I think so.

Never give up on an idea simply because it is bad and doesn't work.

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.