Top 273 Quotes & Sayings by Lewis Black - Page 2

The core of the American public, their hearts and their minds are in the right place. And that gives me hope.

One of the interesting things about comedy is it's tension release, and nothing creates tension faster than anger.

I've been very lucky. There are guys I know who are really terrific in this business of stand-up who have not gotten the recognition they deserve. And it's nice, if you've put in the time, to achieve that recognition.

When I'm funny is when I'm angriest.

What you don't do, if you're an adult, is decide that you're going to budget things through a sequester. What does that word have to do with budgeting? It's like if you have a family budget and go, 'We really don't know what to take out economically from the budget, so we're going to whack out protein for this week.'

If we're not going to tax the rich anymore, we're going to create class warfare.

My parents were married for sixty-five years, and I was married for about ten minutes, my first year at Yale Drama School. Something, somehow, didn't get passed on to my generation.

Republicans and Democrats can barely do what they're supposed to do, and they sure can't do math!

One of the most important things, especially when you're leaving school, is to realize you're going to be dealing with a lot of idiots. And a lot of those idiots are in charge of things, so if you're in an interview and you really want to tell the person off, don't do it.

My problem has always been with authority, and I'm sure if anybody understands that, it's people in uniform.

I watch some CNN and a lot of Fox, because it helps me get irritated.

Being a playwright is like the equivalent of doing a jigsaw puzzle that has 1,500 pieces, and it's a jigsaw of a blue sky. Not a cloud in sight.

I don't Tweet a lot because I've Tweeted things that I thought were really innocuous about subjects that are inflammatory, and the response is so insane sometimes from people.

Everybody's always asking me about my blood pressure. They did an interview once where they hooked me up to a blood pressure machine and they'd rile me. I'd yell and scream, and then it would just go back to normal in a few minutes. Everything else is probably rotting, but the blood pressure is spectacular.

No matter what, your parents are going to worry about you. I had a tour bus, and my mother still thought I was broke. Remember: It's your life, not theirs. Just because your parents sent you to college doesn't mean they bought the rest of your life.

I am angry that the Democrats don't have the ability to explain to Republicans that we should be able to feed people in this country, and that is not socialism.

Self-love is a big part of golf.

Macs are not intuitive. It's intuitive to the person who created it. It's not intuitive to me.

I've got stress like anybody else, and it builds up during the day. Like, I'll be trying to do something on the computer, and I'll get stuck, so I go to the help section. And it just enrages me, because why even call it a help section at all? There's nothing in any way 'helpful' about it.

Democrats are like a big tortoise that's on its back and can't get up; you can't make jokes about that.

Stupidity really gets me going, when it's just plain stupid, obvious stupidity.

Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible; it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun.

Socialism appeals to me. It's like imposed Christianity. You've got to share.

I don't understand how anybody's still a Democrat or a Republican. I don't know what they're basing it on.

Every time I use an app, part of my brain dies! We'll get to the point where we go to bed and wonder: 'Did I have a thought today?' You'll have to go to your 'Thought' app!

There should be a law that you can't shut down the government - that you don't have that power.

I like college football, but I'm a huge college basketball fan. I could sit and watch every game of March Madness and be happy. That could be a vacation.

In Vegas, you have an audience you can't find anywhere else. It's from all over the country. You play Seattle, everyone's from Seattle. But in Vegas, you have six from Seattle, a bunch from L.A., some local Las Vegans and maybe a farmer from Iowa. In Vegas, you learn the ins and outs of holding a room because of that great spectrum of folks.

I don't buy the 'at 60 it's great to have kids' thing. I don't buy the line that has been thrown down - 'You can have a kid at any time.' That doesn't mean you should.

Nobody in college races home and says, 'I can't wait to see the news! I can't wait to see who CBS is going to hire!'

Democrats should be focused on which way we can help the most people in this country, and Republicans should be focused on how to do that in the most fiscally responsible manner possible.

The fine line that you do when you do political comedy is, as long as you have that laugh, you're fine.

The kids say golf taught them this and that. I get it with the military: A guy joins the military because he needs discipline and has to find himself. But don't tell me, 'Golf helps you find yourself.' I've been playing my whole life, and I'm still looking for myself.

When a country wants television more than they want clean water, they've lost their grip.

If you're going to pick a book and you want to base a system of government around it, why not 'Harry Potter?'

I like indoor Christmas trees. And I like people who decorate their homes with lights and all that crap. I think it's a healthy outlet for them. If they weren't covering their lawns with twinkling lights, they'd be doing something that was really, really creepy.

Most of the longer-term relationships I've known have been gay relationships. They seem to be able to hang out longer.

Usually I'm too tired to apologize.

I like my friends because they make me feel normal, even though I'm not.

This is how sad my life is: I got a scar from scratching my chicken pox too much. That's my big scar story. I really have no major scars.

The Democrats have responded to the Republicans' lack of dealing with reality by truly not dealing with reality, either.

I think that many things that go on in an art school have a tendency to undermine confidence, and that shouldn't be part of the ballgame, ever.

I continue to work on plays, but I've always felt that you could put a note in a bottle and send it offshore, and you'd have as much chance communicating with people.

You look at my audience, and it proves what Congress thinks America is, is wrong. I get people across the political spectrum. Parents and kids come and they're all punked out, and there are these other guys in John Deere caps.

For a while, I thought the great disappointment of my life was that I don't have a family of my own. Then it dawned on me: That's not what I think; that's what married people think.

You got to be just stupid to not be focused on alternative energy.

One thing I know about the rich, being rich, is that you can take money from me and tomorrow, I'm still going to be rich.

I think that I don't panic as much as the folks on the left or the right do. I don't have that sense of panic.

When you're fund-raising for schools, then something's wrong. We seem to have lost some sort of sense of what the common good is, and if you don't have a sense of what the common good is, then at least give to what you think your specific goods are.

People would be a lot better off if they'd enjoy being single.

I'm not a big birthday guy; I never have been.

You're on Facebook, and these people seem to have endless lives. I don't have time to live my life, let alone tell you what I'm doing, or post a photo.

Kids seem to get me when I play colleges - they like it because I go after them. They'll come up after and say I am like their dads, only funny.

Stand-up is the only thing in which you actually write it, act it and direct it simultaneously, so it's actually a great theater exercise.

When we anticipate, we're the happiest. Unless you're on antidepressants. The reason you take antidepressants is because you can't anticipate. You think everything's going to be horrible, so it usually is.

I'm constantly in fear of having a stroke.

What makes it difficult for people trying to follow a dream is that the whole time you feel like you're slamming your head against the wall. So it's nice to make a breakthrough and not kind of lying there with your head bleeding.

The fear of health care changing is beyond belief. Like there's a way to make the system worse. Really?

Let me be serious: divorce is a sacred institution between a man and a woman who hate each other. God wanted Adam to pay alimony to Eve, not Steve.

If you yell about one woman, you're not a misogynist. If I yell about Michelle Bachman, that doesn't make me a misogynist. If I compare all women to Michelle Bachman, then I'm a misogynist.