Top 981 Quotes & Sayings by George Carlin - Page 13

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?

Environmentalists changed the word jungle to rain forest, because no one would give them money to save a jungle. Same with swamps and wetlands.

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.

Abraham Maslow said that the fully realized person transcends his local group and identifies with the species. But the election of Ronald Reagan might've been the beginning of my giving up on my species. Because it was absurd. To this day it remains absurd. More than absurd, it was frightening: it represented the rise to supremacy of darkness, the ascendancy of ignorance.

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

When you look at Earth from that one picture, the one from space, it's really a rather attractive thing. I have nothing against the planet per se. I root for the big comet or asteroid as a way of cleansing the planet. The comet or asteroid 65 million years ago is probably what gave us our opening to replace the reptiles. The greatest entertainment I have in my life is chronicling internally, not necessarily for the public, the slow dissolution of order.

In the doggie dictionary, under "bow wow" it says, "See "arf arf.""

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.

Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?

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?

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

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

If everyone in the world sat quietly at the same time, closed their eyes and concentrated as hard as they could on peace and goodwill, all the killing and cruelty in the world would continue. And probably increase.

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

I'm thinking of buying a church and changing it around: maybe selling crack and having a few whores in the pew.

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

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

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

Shopping and buying and getting and having comprise the Great American Addiction. No one is immune. When the underclass riots in this country they don't kill policemen and politicians, they steal merchandise. How embarrassing.

An art thief is a man who takes pictures.

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

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.

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.

When it comes to God's existence, I'm not an atheist and I'm not agnostic. I'm an acrostic. The whole thing puzzles me.

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?

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?

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

The older you get, the better you realize you were.

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!

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.

The whole problem with the world today: private property. If no one owned anything, it would be a lot better. There's even an entire industry devoted to keeping an eye on other people's stuff. This is how stupid it's got. If you decide to get rid of a lot of your stuff, you can give it to a thrift shop or to Goodwill.

I definitely have a gift for language that is rhythmic and attractive to the ear, and I have interesting [verbal] imagery which I guess is a poetic touch.

The symphony orchestra had played poorly, so the conductor was in a bad mood. That night he beat his wife--because the music hadn't been beautiful enough.

More people write poetry than read it.

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

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

So I do have this ambivalence. Obviously I'm against militaries, because of what militaries do. In many ways though, the air force was unmilitary-like. They dropped bombs on people, but...they had a golf course.

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

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

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.

If a lobster didn't look like a sci-fi monster, people would be less able to drop him alive into boiling water.

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

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

Things I wonder about the FBI's list of the "Ten Most Wanted" criminals: When they catch a guy and he comes off the list, does number eleven automatically move up? And does he see it as a promotion? Does he call his criminal friends and say, "I made it, Bruno. I'm finally on the list"?

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

Give now. Somewhere, someone feels crappy. You can help.

You know what I like about the American form of government? They've worked things out so that you're never far from a 7-Eleven.

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

Most of the time people feel okay. Probably it's because at the moment they're not actually dying.

Never underestimate the role pretension plays when it comes to creating euphemistic language.

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage.

I consider the coke a major cause. Of course, you could also make the argument that because cocaine speeds up the heart, it's good for you.