Top 119 Quotes & Sayings by Lily Tomlin - Page 2

I worry about kids today - because of the sexual revolution, they're going to grow up and never know what "dirty" means.

I still believe that sex is dirty. It's just that now I wouldn't have it any other way.

I feel some part of me can wake up and be very existential and the next day wake up and be sort of in love with the universe.

Truth is, I've always been selling out. The difference is that in the past, I looked like I had integrity because there were no buyers.

After all, in private, we're all misfits

If you can't be direct, why be?

You can't expect insights, even the big ones, to make you suddenly understand everything. But I figure: Hey it's a step in the right direction if they leave you confused in a deeper way.

The thing that most distresses me is whenever I see things over sexualized, I worry about young girls. Some of the fall out of the feminist movement is that it made younger and younger girls more sexually available. It's part of the philosophy, be your own person and be free. But, girls are so over sexualized in this culture.

I think life is perverse. It can be beautiful, but it won't.

I'm not a religious person. I don't have any desire. To me it's imitative of a conventional culture. I'm all for it for anybody. I totally have a free and open feeling about how other humans want to live their lives. It's just not something that has any real significance for me.

9 to 5 made people aware of equal pay for equal work. It hasn't really happened, but it has come closer.

To me, "sexual freedom" means freedom from having to have sex.

My politics are just inclined to be empathetic and humanistic. I grew up with so many different kinds of people with different politics, different religion, no religion, no politics, education, no education, and I was infatuated with all of them.

Even when I'm being funny, I'm deadly serious.

Having a real public outlet is how you imprint something for yourself. It's just a matter of timing. It's like you've marked your territory.

When we talk to god, it's prayer. When god talks to us, it's schizophrenia.

What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down where you can find it.

Infinity is just time on an ego trip.

Language was invented because of the deep human need to complain.

Every day I read the newspapers, and no matter how cynical I get, it's imposssible to keep up.

Being a New Yorker is never having to say you are sorry.

The formula for water is H2O. Is the formula for an ice cube H2O squared?

The whole idea of being in captivity in such limited space, especially in a zoo, causes elephants to suffer. They develop all kinds of foot diseases. They die. They get cysts. Not only is it painful, it eventually kills them.

There's nothing sadder than getting to the end of your life and saying, 'I didn't do it right'.

Reality is nothing more than a collective hunch.

If you have a dog or a cat, you know how developed they can be. How sensitive, how aware. They suffer. We all do.

Lady, I do not make up things. That is lies. Lies are not true. But the truth could be made up if yo know how. And that's the truth.

There will be sex after death, we just won't be able to feel it.

To act out something or take chances in the performance is one thing. But in terms of a camera, whatever's captured is captured so that's a little more daunting. You know you can't go back next week and fix it. Whereas in a live audience you know it's so in the moment and you just go with what's happening. First of all you never have to see it again so you don't know if you were really fulfilling it or not.

Nobody is here without a reason. I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy - from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated - but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.

If beauty is truth, why don't women go to the library to have their hair done?

I wanted to be a stage actress. I wanted to be a New York actress and have a community with other actors. I didn't want to get famous; I always thought getting famous was a drag on you.

When we speak to God, we call it prayer; when God speaks back, we call it psychosis!

I have always felt that humor was a wonderful vehicle to let us become connected with each other and ourselves… I try to portray the similarities and polarities in men and women, so that we can acknowledge and embrace our collective consciousness.

Did you know, throughout the cosmos they found intelligent life forms that play to play? We are the only ones that play to win. Explains why we have more than our share of losers.

If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest.' I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing.

Suddenly I burst into song: 'Awe, sweet mystery of life, at last I found thee...' And I felt so good inside and my heart felt so full, I decided I would set time aside each day to do awe-robics. Because at the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life that you don't understand, you are closer to understanding it all than at any other time.

Growing up in Michigan was fine...until I realized where I was.

The phone company handles 84 billion calls a year-everything from kings, queens, and presidents to the scum of the earth.

Did you know, in the entire universe, we are the only intelligent life forms thought to have a Miss Universe contest?

I wonder what it would be like if we all became what we wanted to be when we grew up? I mean, imagine a world filled with nothing but firemen, cowboys, nurses and ballerinas.

If life is so meaningless, then why are we always bringing it up?

Does your mind feel more and more like teflon? Nothing sticks to it?

I bought a box of animal crackers, but there was nothing inside. They'd eaten each other.

When I've had a meltdown, people will say to me, "Well, you failed to keep your sense of humor."

We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.

In the depths of the night, fear grips my heart. It paralyzes my mind. But most of all, I feel very, very alone

The larger picture is really to swing people's awareness of what really is moral.

I try to be cynical, but it's so hard to keep up.

And yet humanity is so not evolved that how can you expect anything absolutely major to happen? Look how long, we move ahead in technology, how much do we move ahead in morality or emotion? We move ahead so minimally, minimally, minimally.

Thank God kids never mean well

People hire me to create some kind of archetype or some culture type, or something. I guess they accept whatever I come up with.

No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.

I never thought of myself as any kind of a film star, as many films as I've made - and I've made some really fun movies with good people. I've always been paired with someone because I'm not really box office, in that carrying-a-picture sense. I've always been busy, but not in the spotlight.

I was always empathetic with animals. It's a terrible and self-involved point of view that we do something because someone else is exploitable.

It's a more ridiculing, divisive humor today.

Sexual freedom and liberation has to be of your own making. I'm stunned when I hear about friends' children, ten or twelve years old giving blow jobs. I just don't like the girls being used or exploited in that way. It's just indiscriminate sexual relating. It's just the isolated things.

We're giving jobs to people who would otherwise be out of work if we weren't exploiting cheap labor.

My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again. They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape. The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts.