Top 160 Quotes & Sayings by Frankie Boyle

I've said jokes where I thought people might get up and hit me for this. A couple of people have thought about it. But they didn't. It gives you a lot of power, because if you're on shows where people are worried about getting sacked and you're not, then you're transcendent because you say what other people would like to say.

If you're an activist trying to do something important, I salute you. Most of us just give ourselves ethical brownie points for watching Channel 2 instead of Channel 3, like characters in a broad dystopian satire.

Remember, taboos are just a map of what a society feels it's acceptable to be neurotic about. Taboos aren't rational.

Sectarianism is a real problem, but it should be addressed by people engaging with each other - reconciliation.

Supporting Celtic, waving a tricolour because your parents are Irish - that's a valid culture.

People think that the Middle East is very complex but I have an analogy that sums it up quite well. If you imagine that Palestine is a big cake, well... that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew.

I loved the idea of Bowie as an artist, with his Burroughsian cut-up technique, creating these undecipherable, abstract songs, where we all projected our own meanings onto his jarring word choices and unexpected chord changes.

Perhaps we've got so involved in the false selves we project on social media that we've forgotten that our real selves, our private selves, are different, are worth saving.

I think the most important things my book does is to give readers the address of George Monbiot's website and how to get hold of comic books by Grant Morrison.

That's what I do in my stand-up. I work hard and hone the material and after a while audiences expect what I do to be good.

The Internet shows me how limited my interests are - there's everything out there and I'm still looking at what the weather's going to be like in Scotland.

I can make a joke pointing out that David Cameron told off Sri Lanka for human rights abuses committed with weapons Britain sold it - like Ronald McDonald calling you a fat bastard.

I just want to do something that I feel makes a difference.

There are a lot of problems with democracy. We need to think about how to find the people most qualified for the job.

The thing that nobody really said about Rebecca Adlington is that she looks pretty weird. She looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon.

I absolutely loathe adverts. I won't go into the cinema until 20 minutes after the film is due to start because there are so many.

I love the BBC and I think it's a really important thing.

I'm not cynical at all.

I worry about everything in this country in particular.

Only the British could experience great pain at the thought of a traffic jam - a place where you can sit alone with your radio on without being expected to do any work. Aren't traffic jams unbearable? By the time you get home, you need to sit alone in a comfy chair with your favourite music on just to calm down.

I don't think I'm angry. I'm horrified - powered by horror.

We need to take urgent action on climate change.

Creationists have often made me doubt evolution, but probably not in the way they think.

I've been studying Israeli army martial arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back.

Doug Stanhope is great - I saw his 'Burning the Bridge to Nowhere' show and it was inspiring. He's like an anti-shaman, taking the sting out of a bunch of things we've chosen to give a symbolic power to. I've made it sound noble and worthy there, it's not, it's really funny.

I'm actually all for political correctness. If you want to work to change the usage of a word that's discriminatory then fine, I'm behind you. But that's a conversation that needs to be had in the culture. You can't just decide that commonly used parts of a language are evil and that the people who didn't get the memo must be bad people.

Comedians shame people.

I did a ski festival in Austria once. I was struck by how friendly Austrians were, before gradually realising it's more that Glaswegians are awful.

Internationally, I propose the radical step of not trying to solve complex political problems with 1,000lb bombs; domestically, I propose they start addressing inequality by paying reparations for slavery. I'm well aware that in a society where war and discrimination are now almost entirely normalised, both options sound like madness.

The No 1 priority in TV comedy today is 'don't frighten the horses,' and it's probably No 2 and 3 as well.

Comedy is a terrible way to meet women. It's certainly a way to start talking to them, but they always have preconceptions about you.

Supporting Rangers, being in an Orange Lodge, that whole life - that's a valid culture.

The average British person would hear me doing my joke about Rebecca Adlington and realise there's no malice in it. It was an off-the-cuff ad lib.

For anyone who has ever asked why the U.S. needs to address the issue of reparations for its history of slavery, Donald Trump is why. He is the living embodiment of America's unresolved issues.

Admittedly, the Conservatives are generally more persuasive orators than their Labour counterparts, perhaps a skill developed by spending school holidays trying to lure father out from behind his Daily Telegraph.

I think we live in a quite an immoral society with quite an amoral government and they're going to have to grow up in that and negotiate their own way in it.

I went through a brief phase years ago of getting Men's Health then I realised there are actually only three ways to do a sit-up and they're just repackaging it endlessly.

I've never felt any sense of kinship with other comedians; they've always seemed too needy.

There's still a lot of racism in stand-up.

I have some friends who are comedians but not many.

Your ruling class don't care about what happens to you. What seems like some enormous upset in your community is undetectable from a helicopter or a speeding motorcade. They are pitiless.

I think there is racism at the heart of British policy and has been both in Labour and Conservative times.

People feel much more comfortable with the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' version of women's liberation: possibly feeling life would be much simpler if the suffragettes hadn't wanted the vote and just really enjoyed chaining themselves to railings.

It's always easier to dismiss other people than to go through the awkward and time consuming process of understanding them.

I read tons of comic books. My favourite is Grant Morrison, a Scottish comic writer.

The Conservative party now exists largely to misinform the public, to convince voters struggling through austerity that they have the same interests as billionaires and corporations.

I have no real enemies in comedy, but there are a couple of people who I'd laugh about if I heard that their legs had fallen off.

British people have a really sophisticated sense of humour, because we're exposed to much more than Europeans and Americans, not least in our literary heritage.

I think you have a lot of rich and Conservative people who control our country who are racist and their views trickle down through things like tabloid papers.

We fear the arrival of immigrants that we have drawn here with the wealth we stole from them. For much of the rest of the world we must be the focus of bitter amusement, characters in a satire we don't understand. It is British people that don't learn languages, or British history. Britain is the true scrounger, the true criminal.

In a lot of farther-flung places in Scotland people are guarded at first, but as soon as they get to know you they really hate you.

I don't believe I'm a recovering alcoholic - I'm someone who used to drink. AA comes from a religious movement and that whole thing of 'I'm always burdened with this' and the original sin idea. It's not like that for me.

In my early 20s, there was a period when all I owned was about a dozen CDs and a crappy Discman. I'd listen to 'The Man Who Sold The World' album endlessly as I sat on off-peak trains jerking around the Sussex countryside to and from the asylum I worked in.

Trump's one liberal policy seems to be his desire to pump more funding into mental health - which I've taken the liberty of interpreting as a massive cry for help.

In the future we will all be famous for 15 minutes. It will be on a daytime magazine programme and we will each wear a tasteful shirt and slacks combination. We'll be interviewed by a soothing voice under a clock that's permanently set to 4pm. We will talk about the weather. We will record for months to get 15 minutes they can use in the edit.

I was drinking so much coffee and Red Bull just to keep going it screwed me.

The SNP are far from radical, but they do have a knack for producing the odd simple, progressive policy that's hard to argue against.

Of course, it's hard to get interested in the whole idea of government. Nothing ever changes, especially people saying 'nothing ever changes,' despite the fact their kid now has a free nursery place and their aunt was forced to work despite having dementia.

America has gone from the Obama Years to the Trump Years, like going from the 'West Wing' to a sitcom where the incidental music involves a tuba.

How hard is it to get female panellists?