Lenny Bruce Quotes

Every group needs a comedian. A comic who is politically incorrect at the Berkeley campus might slay them at a Klan rally.

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair.

If you live in New York, even if you're Catholic, you're Jewish

You put a guy on a desert island, he'll do it to mud, a chicken, a barrel, anything, a knothole.

Certain things are complete superstition and have no validity at all in the Bible. Yeah. They're just the antithesis of everything that is correct intellectually.

Communism is like one big phone company.

When you're eight years old, nothing is any of your business.

Once you sleep on feathers you can't go back to sleeping on the floor.

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't.

I'm not a comedian. I'm Lenny Bruce.

Satire is tragedy plus time.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

There's always a down side with any freedom. It's not just homosexual freedom, but any sexual freedom comes at a price, and that is usually art.

You got to pay your dues to get the joke. Besides, laughter is cheap and very portable. If there's a pogrom, or they're blaming you for the plague, nothing is easier to pack than a sense of humor.

I know what "custody" [of the children] means. "Get even." That's all custody means. Get even with your old lady.

I've talked to biblical cats, and Neanderthals who been here since day one. No one here has even seen the Big Boss. Ever.

I'll die young, but it's like kissing God.

Communism is just one big telephone company.

What you end up with is outrageousness without the laugh - comedy as electro shock therapy.

If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone.

TV is just advertising for your live gig, so I'm playing whichever show is gonna get me the biggest crowd.

The crooks downtown figured out that comedy is like a hammer. It can put up a barn and it can knock down a wall. So they bought it outright and marketed it as Comedy Central.

I'm sure that half the buzz from smoking grass was the fact that it was so illegal.

There is only what is and that's it. What should be is a dirty lie.

I credit the motion picture industry as the strongest environmental factor in molding the children of my day.

Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish even if you are Jewish.

You can't just run out and start the car until some cat invents a car.

I want to perform an unnatural act.

If I get busted in New York, the freest city in the world, that will be the end of my career.

When you're eight years old nothing is your business.

All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the bread line - right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

I won't say ours was a tough school but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like "What I'm Going to Be if I Grow Up."

The whole motivation for any performer is 'Look at me Ma.'

(On his addiction to opiods): I'll die young, but it's like kissing God.

I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like "What I'm Going to be If I Grow Up

The 'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no 'what should be, ' there is only what is.

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it...try to fake three laughs in an hour -- ha ha ha ha ha -- they'll take you away, man. You can't.

There are never enough 'I love you's.