Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Lenny Bruce - Page 2

When earth gets good and crowded, like 15th century England, then some new Pilgrims are gonna rocket their Mayflowers to a new solar system.

Every tribe needs a good front man to sell the program. Who better to convince the Middle East to give up the oil, than a brown man with a Muslim name?

I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write songs like, "What I'm going to do if I grow up".

If you believe there is a God, a God that made your body, and yet you think that you can do anything with that body that's dirty, then the fault lies with the manufacturer.

My only challenge was to tell my truth, man... figure out what I had to say. These days, it's not enough to boost that roomful of strangers. The young comic spends all their time trying to sound different from the million other jokesters grabbing for the mic.

If you're going to stop masturbating, you can't taper off. You've got to quit, cold jerky!

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it.

I would become a priest or a rabbi or a monk or whatever the hell was necessary to perform miracles such as taking money from someone else's pocket and putting it into mine, still remaining within the confines of the law.

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

Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.

I've been accused of bad taste, and I'll go down to my grave accused of it and always by the same people, the ones who eat in restaurants that reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair.

I am influenced by every second of my waking hour.

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

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

The reason I'm in this business, I assume all performers are -- it's Look at me, Ma! It's acceptance, you know -- Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma. And if your mother watches, you'll show off till you're exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!

Sex and obscenity are not synonymous.

Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from that tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is - One Who Killed Our Lord. And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.

If I just stuck to pot I might have found out what a drag being an aging hipster actually was.

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

Part of the kick of making people laugh was doing something different. We were a rare breed - spotting one of us was like pinning a space alien, or abdominal snowman. There were maybe a hundred stand-ups in the whole country when I was doing it.

The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is what should be. Now, if you're taught to live up to a what should be that never existed - only an occult superstition, no proof of this should be - then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!

Children ought to watch pornographic movies: it's healthier than learning about sex from Hollywood.

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 tried the religion scam in Miami, so I know how hard that gig is. But, if you can get it to work, starting your own religion is a license to print money.

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.

Marijuana is rejected all over the world. Damned. In England heroin is alright for out-patents, but marijuana? They'll put your ass in jail. I wonder why that is? The only reason could be: To Serve the Devil - Pleasure! Pleasure, which is a dirty word in Christian culture.

I wanted out of the navy so bad in '45, I faked homo to get a discharge. It didn't matter that the Germans surrendered, I knew we were heading to Japan and I was done with that scene.

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

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 want to perform an unnatural act.

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

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

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

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

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.

Anyone who does anything for pleasure to indulge his selfish soul will surely burn in Hell.

I was a Jew talking about Goyim religion. If I had just stuck to Moses, everything would have been cool. But, copping to being part of the whole Christ murder conspiracy got everyone goose-stepping again.

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.

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

Communism is just one big telephone company.

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

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

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

Dig: I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor's goyish. B'nai B'rith is goyish; Hadassah, Jewish. If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be goyish even if you're Jewish.

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

...Catholicism is like Howard Johnson, and what they have are these franchises and they give all these people different franchises in the different countries but they have one government, and when you buy the Howard Johnson franchise you can apply it to the geography - whatever's cool for that area - and then you, you know, pay the bread to the main office.

Satire is tragedy plus time.

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