Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Lenny Bruce

Today, I give my daughter what I really didn't have as a kid: all the silly, dumb, extravagant, frilly, nonfunctional toys I can force on her. She probably wants an encyclopedia.

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

I don't read enough books, so I guess I'm pretty shallow. I'm a lot into the physical. With me, first attraction is never intellectual.

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

Communism is like one big phone company.

A lot of people say to me, 'Why did you kill Christ?' I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know.

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.

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.

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.

If God made the body, and the body is dirty, then the fault lies with the manufacturer.

I would be with a bunch of Kennedy fans watching the debate, and their comment would be, 'He's really slaughtering Nixon.' Then we would all go to another apartment, and the Nixon fans would say, 'How do you like the shellacking he gave Kennedy?'

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.

The only truly anonymous donor is the guy who knocks up your daughter.

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

I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do.

I don't have an act. I just talk. I'm just Lenny Bruce.

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

The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.

There are never enough I Love You's.

I'm not a comedian. And I'm not sick. The world is sick, and I'm the doctor. I'm a surgeon with a scalpel for false values.

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.

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

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.

Wouldn't it be nice if all the people who are lonesome could live in one big dormitory, sleep in beds next to each other, talk, laugh, and keep the lights on as long as they want to?

Trying to figure things out was my gig. Without the human condition, there's no struggle, no pain and that means no laughter.

Alright, let's admit it, we Jews killed Christ - but it was only for three days.

My mother-in-law broke up my marriage. My wife came home from work one day and found me in bed with her.

Every group, every system has a set of values and morals and when you get outside those, then the alarms ring. I was politically incorrect to 95% of the country; luckily my 5% had the bread to come see me.

I think it's about time we gave up religion and got back to God.

That's where the conflict starts. We all want for a wife a combination Sunday school teacher and a $500-a-night hooker.

Freedom of speech is a two way street, man. You have the right to say whatever you want and the Boss has a right to tell the police to arrest you.

I was surprised when Nixon passed the test and showed up in heaven, but, I guess Hitler threw off the curve for our century.

Anyone who has two shirts when someone has none is not a christian.

You can't do anything with anybody's body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person - you can do only one thing to make it dirty: kill it. Hiroshima was dirty.

Never trust a preacher with more than two suits.

If there was absolute freedom, people would run over babies and charge admission.

Darwin's theory is as dead as he is. Everyone is surviving, fit or not. Years ago, any kid dumb enough to chase a shiny object down a well was dead, and out of the gene pool. Now they got the technology and medicine to save the fool so he can breed more open mouth breathers.

Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich.

There are no dirty words, only dirty minds.

There's a lot of money in wars, except in the war on poverty. Can't make any bread helping the poor.

Life is a four-letter word.

You got a million drug laws now because the bosses figured there was more money in putting people in jail than taxing something anyone can grow on a window sill.

You know there's no crooked politicians. There's never a lie because there is never any truth.

Koolaid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish, and, as you know, white bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes - goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are very Jewish - very Jewish cake. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is goyish. Lime soda is very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that Jews won't go near them.

If you're from New York and you're Catholic, you're still Jewish. If you're from Butte Montana and you're Jewish, you're still goyisch. The Air Force is Jewish, the Marine Corps dangerous goyisch. Rye Bread is Jewish, instant potatoes, scary goyisch. Eddie Cantor is goyisch, George Jessel is goyisch-Coleman Hawkins is Jewish.

What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.

To say whatever nonsense comes into your head without any repercussions has got to be a bigger high than heckling a movie screen in a darkened theater.

Never tell. Not if you love your wife...In fact, if your old lady walks in on you deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and she'll believe it: "I'm tellin' ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around her neck 'Lay On Top Of Me Or I'll Die.' " I didn't know what I was goin' to do.

It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.

Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people!

Once you take away the struggle for food, clothing and shelter, work is the one four letter word that offends everyone.

Guys are like dogs. They keep comin' back. Ladies are like cats. Yell at a cat one time, they're gone.

If something about the human body disgusts you, the fault lies with the manufacturer.

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

The American Constitution was not written to protect criminals; it was written to protect the government from becoming criminals.

Once the country was settled and built, the bosses changed the order from a stack of educated workers to a barrel of minimum wage lottery dreamers.

Let me tell you the truth: The truth is what is. And what should be is a fantasy a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago.