Top 84 Quotes & Sayings by Mort Sahl
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian comedian Mort Sahl.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
I dare say that if most comedians today, the gifted ones, were to sit down and write, they'd learn more about their craft. But what happens is they get out there before they learn what their viewpoint is, if any.
When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly.
Too much comedy today is vulgar, not clever. I say that as a comedian and as a consumer.
I was a writer. I couldn't sell anything, and the comedians were among the dumbest people I had ever met. They'd all say to me, 'The average man won't understand it.' You know, they're superior to the average man.
Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.
I was on stage last night, and I gave a medical report about Donald Trump. I said he was hospitalized for an attack of modesty.
Too often, these comedy guys now only care about getting on and then getting off and getting rich.
If you were the only person left on the planet, I would have to attack you. That's my job.
Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.
There are talented people along the way, although very few come to mind. They're not very daring. Part of the problem is that comedians don't want to overthrow anything. They want to join it.
I was afraid no one would laugh, and I wanted to pretend I wasn't noticing the audience. I didn't want the audience to get the idea I was telling a joke and waiting for a laugh.
A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.
I never met a man I didn't like until I met Will Rogers.
I didn't think that anything is beyond humor - not profane humor, but a good, honest approach to humor.
I'm a radical, and I always have been.
Comedians have to challenge the power. Comedians should be dangerous and devastating - and funny. That's the hardest part.
My humor was Victorian - and still is.
I was always biting the hand that fed me. It was compulsive. Kennedy was very good to me, and I attacked him as soon as he was elected. I attacked him before he was elected.
People tell me there are a lot of guys like me, which doesn't explain why I'm lonely.
My life needs editing.
Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times.
Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.
Women have everything they want, and they've never been so unhappy.
I used to go to two movies every week for the Saturday matinee when I was a kid.
There's a great feeling of powerlessness in America. When I express ideas to people, they say, 'That's terrific, but do you think it really counts?'
If someone were to ask me for a short cut to sensuality, I would suggest he go shopping for a used 427 Shelby-Cobra. But it is only fair to warn you that of the 300 guys who switched to them in 1966, only two went back to women.
That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters.
If you can't join them, beat them.
In the forties, to get a girl you had to be a GI or a jock. In the fifties, to get a girl you had to be Jewish. In the sixties, to get a girl you had to be black. In the seventies, to get a girl you've got to be a girl.
Hillary's explanation of the Libyan action to Congress was so good, I wonder who explained it to her?
We all know that America is the worst country in the world, except for all the others.
I found people looked better when they laughed
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas - except the drone.
If you maintain a consistent political position long enough, you'll eventually be accused of treason.
Will Rogers…used to come out with a newspaper and pretend he was a
yokel criticizing the intellectuals who ran the government. I come out with
a newspaper and pretend I’m an intellectual making fun of the yokels
running the government.
Nixon's the kind of guy that if you were drowning fifty feet off shore, he'd throw you a thirty foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way.
You know me, I love lost causes.
I'm for capital punishment. You've got to execute people. How else are they going to learn?
I've arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago. Because when I die, I want to still remain active politically.
I watched Ken Burns' Civil War series on PBS. My favorite segment is when Bob Hope entertains the troops at Gettysburg.
The New York Times is the official leak of the State Department.
If anybody comes up to you and says, My kid is a conservative - why is that? you say, Remember in the 60?s when we told you if you kept using drugs your kids would be mutants?
The bravest thing that men do is love women.
Most people past college age are not atheists. It's too hard to be in society, for one thing. Because you don't get any days off. And if you're an agnostic you don't know whether you get them off or not.
I used to go out with actresses and other female impersonators.
One thing about being narrow-minded: you'll never be lonely.
When Obama ran, he said, We can change the world! The world: can you change it back?!
Obama says his recreation consists of reading the Constitution... looking for a loophole.
There were four million people in the American Colonies and we had Jefferson and Franklin. Now we have over 200 million and the two top guys are Clinton and Dole. What can you draw from this? Darwin was wrong.
Everything I tell you is true, but this is factual.
New book on Malcolm X says we don't know how he was killed. Want to bring in the FBI. Maybe they were in already.
Remember that no matter how selfish, how cruel, how unfeeling you have been today, every time you take a breath, you make a flower happy.
You know what I want you to do? I want you to blow out the candle and curse the darkness.
I took benzedrine - I got clairvoyance. With benzedrine you can have a very wide view of the world, like you can decide the destiny of man and other pressing problems, such as which is the left sock?
I don't believe in good people and bad people. I believe in the better parts of people.
The fact is that you can't have a good relationship with a girl who hasn't settled things with her father.
This matter of two sides to every question is bad logic and bad practice: sometimes there are no sides; sometimes there are a hundred.
A Yuppie is someone who believes it's courageous to eat in a restaurant that hasn't been reviewed yet.
Now that Obama is at war in a 3rd country, does that mean he has to give back his Nobel Peace Prize?
There's a danger our fiscal bankruptcy might overtake our moral bankruptcy.
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