Top 981 Quotes & Sayings by George Carlin - Page 14

It seems to me like a perversion of talent for an artist of any kind to further the corporate structure of America or the personal interests of the morons and thieves who run it.

Self-expression is a hallmark of an artist, of art, to get something off one's chest, to sing one's song. So that element is present in all art. It is the key to even standing up and saying, "Hey, listen to me." Self-expression can be based on looking at the world and making observations about it.

The effect of the coke on our relationship [with my wife Brenda] was very sick. Now that it's over, those were actually funny times. Looking for each other's coke, hiding it, finding it, doing some, not telling the other. Then fighting over it.

I should think it takes a fairly low intellect to draw pleasure from the following activity: hitting a ball with a crooked stick. and then walking after it! An then ..hitting it again!

No one has to come see my shows who doesn't like me talking about white Christians. They are free not buy a ticket. They're free to leave at any time. So I'm not imposing anything on anyone. Therefore I feel free to cross the line.

I just love it when I hear a little commotion, someone leaving. When I see those doors in the back . . .

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 angles of my body show you an awful lot. I started doing coke to feel open, but by that time, the hole had opened so wide that I'd fallen through. The body language in those photos tells you everything.

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

I literally didn't know my father. My mother had been a secretary, and after she and my father split, she went back to work for an advertising executive. So my older brother and I were "latch-door kids." We went home for lunch and after school by ourselves.

Everybody in America is a part of this big herd of cattle being led to the marketplace, not to be sold, which is usual with cattle, but to do the buying. And everyone is branded. You see the brands - Nike, Puma, Coke - all over their bodies. Pretty soon you'll go to a family and say, "$100,000 if we can tattoo Pepsi on your child's forehead, and we'll have it removed when he's twenty-one. A hundred grand."

We created god in our own image and likeness!

An outsider longing to be on the inside is the same as the soloist longing to work in an ensemble. I get great satisfaction in being a part of the proper - for me - community. I'm uncomfortable with various social groupings and clusterings. But when I'm in the right group, doing the right thing, I get as much satisfaction out of that as anyone who does it all the time.

The coke made me incredibly horny.

There was a built-in audience for the rebel in me that had been all along not expressing himself.

I believe myself to be a worthwhile and inventive performer in my own right. But I'm not in a league with Lenny [Bruce], certainly not in terms of social commentary.

I believe you can joke about anything.

You live eighty years, and at best you get about six minutes of pure magic.

The first obligation I have is to be funny; it's my first impulse and an instinct. I like being funny and finding the jokes.

I don't believe there's any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can't completely ignore.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!

I love it in a movie when they throw a guy off a cliff. I love it even when it's not a movie. No, especially when it's not a movie.

I think everybody should be able to do anything they want and let roving bands of people punish each other for things they don't agree with. People with no underwear doing anything they want. Wouldn't that be fun? You wouldn't need television.

The base of evil in the world is religion of any kind

The sicker you get, the harder it is to remember if you took your medicine.

Sometimes, when I was really loaded, I'd sit on the floor and sort out every nut and bolt in the house. It was just sheer insanity. And often there'd be speed in the cut, so I was a speed freak, too.

And this should go without saying. That's why I'm going to say it: Drinking and driving don't mix. Do your drinking early in the morning and get it out of the way. Then go driving while the visibility is still good.

I've just completed a five-year period that can perhaps best be called a breathing spell. A time of getting my health back and gathering my strength. That time also included incredible cocaine abuse, a heart attack and my wife's recovery from both alcoholism and cocaine abuse.

I think it would be fair and right to use some of my land and wealth for a drug-rehab center or an Indian school.

I went to my old school, where all the kids I'd been with for eight years were about to graduate. But the sisters wanted me to repeat the whole term; so I went to the principal and pleaded with her to allow me to graduate with my class. She finally agreed on the condition that I write the graduation play. It was called How Do You Spend Your Leisure Time?Catchy title, huh?

When people asked me, "Do you get high to go onstage?" I could never understand the question. I mean, I'd been high since eight that morning.

You know, if a drug has anything going for it at all, it should be self-limiting. It should tell you when you've had enough. Acid and peyote were that way for me.

It's a "keep your fingers crossed" business, the entertainment business.

I think of myself as an entertainer: I'm a performing entertainer, I'm a stand-up comic. But there's an artist at work here, too. One who interprets his world through his own filter.

When I see a large group of people, I wonder how many of them will eventually require autopsies.

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

In adolescence you have to separate yourself and establish your identity. So, being very independent anyway, I took charge.

Anyone who's onstage is going to attract a certain number of misguided people. But I was never very interested in groupies. Instead of thinking about the sex, I'd always think about the clap and the crabs those people have.

I went to George Washington High School for six months before my 16th birthday, when I could legally quit. That was an even worse experience than the Catholic schools. I mean, they were still teaching fractions. But mostly, I played hooky.

Did you ever look at your watch, and you look away... and you don't know what time it is?

There are a lot of little things about our bodies that we all know, but we never talk about. That's what interests me. These are practically universal experiences; nobody mentions them! Some of them are disgusting. Some of them are appallingly revolting and degrading even to the most degenerate mind. So let's get started with a couple of them.

Once the high priests and the traders took over, we were lost as a species.

I was a class clown, of the classic term for it. I would get the work done easily, and then I would try to deprive other people of their educations. I developed skills for mimicry, and I was a good showoff. I knew how to get attention, and I knew how to do it in a positive funny way.

My mother and I had a lot of distance between us emotionally, although, on the surface, most of the time, we appeared good and friendly, and all that. But I was a problem. I was a street kid.

Language always gives you away.

I feel sorry for confetti. Its useful life lasts about two seconds. And it can never be used again.

I use the [vulgar] words because apparently these words do not corrupt morally. I'm from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It's a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It's never to shock. I know where it fits, it's never to shock. There's no shock value left in words.

The secretiveness. The stealth. Those were obviously the aspects of cocaine use I was addicted to.

There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions, and wooooords.

I believe myself to be a worthwhile and inventive performer in my own right. [And] I want to be known for what I do best.

When I first heard the song Don't worry - be happy I realized it was exactly the kind of mindless philosophy that Americans would respond to. It would make a great national anthem along with Me first.

One of the interesting things about "outsidership" is that underneath it there's a longing to belong. I just wish the thing I refused to belong to - the species, Western capital culture - was a little more respectable. My one true relaxation is my flotation tank, in which I can either meditate or just drift off.

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.

I try not to see new comics - their acts or their films. Part of that is professional. I don't want to be influenced. But another part is fear and jealousy. I'm afraid to see how good they might be. I don't like that emotion, but it's part of me.

Leadership camp? Isn't that where Hitler went?

Baseball is the only major sport that appears backwards in a mirror.

Besides the drugs and counterculture, I started talking about myself, which is the first thing you do when you are a writer.

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

The two big mistakes were the belief in a sky god - that there's a man in the sky with 10 things he doesn't want you to do and you'll burn for a long time if you do them - and private property, which I think is at the core of our failure as a species. That's the source of my indignations, my dissatisfactions, however it comes out on the stage. I feel betrayed by the people I'm part of, these creatures, these magnificent creatures.

Interesting form of murder we come up with: Assassination. We assassinate people who've told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Apparently we are not ready to live together.