Free Speech Activists

"Sometimes I write stuff now and I go "am I really rebelling there, or am I just conforming?" Because our society works on conformity. People talk about racist cops; they don't select for racism. There isn't a test where they go "I'm afraid you failed; you answered several questions about the history of Motown correctly." They test you for conformity so that you'll just nod along with structural racism, and sometimes I say to myself "well, am I conforming?" So look, I compèred Live at the Apollo a couple of years ago - which is a type of conformity in itself - and at the time, you're supposed to do jokes on all these celebrities they've got down at the front and one of them was this really brilliant female boxer who I really admired and I'd followed her whole career. I had written this joke which I was really proud of which was "At the Olympics, in the women's boxing, they fought in two minute rounds which was good, because if had been three minute rounds I think I would have ejaculated my own pelvis." (laughter) And you know, I really laughed when I wrote that. I thought "that's fucking hilarious" because you'd never say that to someone's face, would you? And then as I was walking to the show I was thinking; people do say that kind of thing, people say that kind of thing in school - especially me. People say it now on social media, so am I just fucking conforming here? And what am I conforming with, a deeply sexist society?"

"At least Theresa May went, she had to go didn't she? Towards the end she had all the authority of the "Do Not Tumble-dry" label. She always had the charm of a fucking war crime. Towards the end her body language had gone; I didn't realise it was possible to limp with both legs. So now we've got Boris Johnson; an evolutionary dead-end of the Honey Monster. A bin bag of albino body parts. A cross between the Incredible Hulk and a Haribo fried egg... is the fucking prime minister! The Prime Minister! It's not just that he's the worst person for the job, he might be the worst mammal! And let's not forget how they create these people; they're created in the public school system, that's where they lose their empathy. They're forged in the crucible of hierarchical sodomy. That's why they can't get along, the last time the cabinet saw eye-to-eye it was over the back of a weeping first year. Incidentally, I'm not one of those people who thinks there's a paedophile ring in Westminster, I think it's probably more of a queue."

"You get these people, and they'll probably always be with us, who get offended by comedy. And I used to not mind until it occurred to me one day; most people who get offended at jokes watch porn! Like, pretty much all of them! There's someone right now watching torture porn going (mimicking someone masturbating) "I hope nobody makes a joke about a fuckin' swimmer's nose!" And then you get these people who defend comedy and say "oh this is a free speech issue", it's not a free speech issue; it's an artistic license issue. You're allowed to talk about it because it's not real on some level, right? There will always be people who won't get it, there's always those people who go "I think you'll find that if two blokes actually took a crocodile into a pub, there would be fucking carnage." But it's not real, so we get to joke about it. I think people sometimes get confused with how they use humour in their own life with what this is. So most people use humour as a form of politeness, as an ice breaker - this isn't that. This is sentences that end in a very surprising way."

"(Speaking about Comic Relief and charity) Look, there's a colonial side to British charity, it's true; look at Yemen, right? We're the number one provider of weapons and bombs and expertise to Saudi Arabia that they use to bomb Yemen, to engineer a famine in Yemen. At the same time, we're the number two provide of aid to Yemen - and why not? Life gives you Yemen, you give Yemen aid."

"(Speaking about jokes he made about the 2012 Summer Paralympics Opening Ceremony) The one that papers hated the most was "The Saudi Arabian Paralympic team are mainly thieves.""

"Hello you cunts, black power!"

"I don't like people who lash out at jokes - at the same time, I don't like people who lash out at political correctness. I think it's lazy, and I think it sometimes encourages people to dismantle stuff that protects them. So I'll give you an example; there's a guy I talk to a lot in Glasgow, he's a homeless guy and he was an alcoholic - I suppose that's why I talk to him, because I was an alcoholic. (...) So I was talking to this guy the last time I saw him and I went "What would you say is your biggest problem in life at the minute?" and he went "Do you know what's my biggest problem, Frankie? It's all these fucking snowflakes in the media!" It can't be! It just literally fucking cannot be! You're sleeping rough in the streets of Glasgow, your biggest problem is actual flakes of fucking snow!"

"There is a vegetarian option: you can fuck off."

"People get the wrong idea about me, they think I'm depressed or something - I'm not depressed. I don't wish that I was dead, I wish... that you were all dead."

"(Speaking about French and Italian tabloids printing naked topless photos of Kate Middleton) A family of billionaire perverts [the Royal Family] going nuts about a picture of a pair of tits. The hypocrisy of the British press, [mimicking British press] “oh we wouldn’t print these pictures of tits”. I had to go past pictures of tits to read about how you wouldn’t print pictures of tits. I went past good pictures of tits to read about some shit tits. The only reason Kate Middleton is pregnant is because her tits aren’t worth finishing on."

"Comic relief raised £8 million last year. Britain sold hundreds of millions worth of weapons last year to Africa. So next year, one country in Africa will get blown to smithereens, and the next country along will get a visit from Lenny Henry. And both will feel bitterly jealous of each other."

"(on his previous "department of nigger-bombing" joke) That actually comes from a quote by Lloyd George. Lloyd George, when he was British Prime Minister, said "Britain reserves its right to bomb niggers". And that's an important quote, because once you hear that, you realise that Britain has always been racist from the top down. I thought it's worth using that in a joke for, it's worth using that word for. Guy came up to me after a gig in Glasgow, a white guy, and he said "I don't think that you should ever use the word nigger, in any context." And I said, "Well, you've just used it." And do you know what he said? He said what I kind of hope I would say in the same circumstances. He went "No, I didn't." See, you can't really ban words, right? Ricky Gervais got in trouble for saying "mong", I don't know why he did it, he didn't seem to be able to make it very funny. You can't ban a word! Even a horrible word like that. That's like saying, "Let's just burn one book. Let's just burn Mein Kampf. It's a horrible book, nobody likes it. At the point you burn Mein Kampf, you're a fucking fascist society. And you're not even a proper fascist society, because you've burnt the fucking guide book! You're on marching about in peach military uniforms, invading Poundland. (adopts German accent) "Why did you burn the guide book? Why did you burn the guide book, you fucking spastic?!" "You can't call me that, Herr Groppenführer. That word has been banned. You must call me der Nincompoop!""

"(Speaking about Pope Benedict XVI's resignation) The Pope must have done something that even the Catholic church found unacceptable. My theory is that he fucked an adult woman."

"There's two empty seats right middle - this is supposed to be sold out, where are they? I hope they're dead in a fucking car crash!"

"TV's a fantasy, right? It's a middle class, bourgeois fantasy. You look at daytime TV and how aspirational it is, then ask yourself "who's watching daytime TV?" Benefit cheats, and prisoners. They don't buy and sell antiques. They don't renovate houses to sell them on. They don't have stuff in their attic and if they did have stuff in their attic, it'd be fucking Shannon Matthews."

"I wish the Queen had died the night before the Royal Jubilee – I wish she’d just fucking died. But they wouldn’t have been able to tell us that she’d died. They would have had to hollow out her body and get that guy who plays Gollum to wear it."

"There's a place for McCanns jokes, it's probably here. It's probably not on Dictionary Corner on Countdown. "And as we go into the break, we'd like to remind you that MADDIE is an anagram of I'M DEAD.""

"Apparently Jordan and Peter Andre are fighting each other over custody of Harvey, well eventually one of them’ll lose and have to keep him. I have a theory that Jordan married a cage fighter cause she needed someone strong enough to stop Harvey from fucking her."

"Ministry of Defence? At least in the old days we were honest, called it the Ministry of War. "Hello, Ministry of War, department of nigger-bombing. How can I help?""

"They say that the Olympics is going to rekindle English national pride. I mean, for £9.2 billion they could have written “Fuck off Germany” onto the moon."

"Religion's just what we thought before we understood what mental illness was. "A bush talked to me!" "Brilliant, what did it say? What did the bush say? Let's live our lives by what the bush said!" You stupid fucking cunts."

"You've got a blank face there pal, if you hold that expression for long enough in a hospital you'd get fucking switched off."

"American foreign policy is horrendous 'cause not only will America come to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse, I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad. Oh, boo hoo hoo. Americans making a movie about what Vietnam did to their soldiers is like a serial killer telling you what stopping suddenly for hitchhikers did to his clutch."

"I've had a few medical problems this year: I'm now so old, that my pussy is haunted.(series 4, episode 1; What the Queen didn't say in her Christmas message)"

"The Americans want to build a big tower on the site of September the 11th. Freedom Tower they're going to call it but now apparently they're worried and they're looking at ways to try and make it terrorist proof. I think they should have just build a giant fucking mosque. No one is going to fly into that are they?! Or even better, a runway."

"Nobody thought Mel Gibson could play a Scot but look at him now; an alcoholic racist!"

"Apparently they're going to bring in 'Super Asbos'. But 'Asbos' already sound too cool. Teenagers see them as a badge of honour. They should call them 'Gaybos' or 'Bender Badges'."

"The thing that nobody really said about Rebecca Adlington is that she looks pretty weird. She looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon."

"3 Million for the funeral of Margaret Thatcher? For 3 Million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person."

"When I was about 8 or 9, I was a massive Michael Jackson fan and I wish I had known at the time that I was his type."

"[Talking about Richard Hammond's high-speed dragster crash] That should be the anti-speeding advert. It should be footage of Richard Hammond trying to remember his own wedding day.[Mimicking Richard Hammond] "She was wearing black... or was it red? Am I married?""

"["Lines you wouldn't hear in a superhero movie"] What's that Joker, you'll be back? Somehow I don't think you will be."

"["Lines you wouldn't hear in a superhero movie"] Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Whatever it is it's heading straight for the World Trade Center!"

"Can I just say, my routine about raping and f*****g Holly Willoughby was part of a very long routine about whether or not it's OK to do a joke about that, and I look at it from both sides, there are pluses and minuses."

"I watched the footage of Saddam being executed, and it really made me think…is there nothing on the internet that I won’t masturbate to?"

"Dear points of view, watching "Queer eye for the straight guy" made me think that if I made gay friends, they'd give me fashion tips. Actually, they fucked me."

"I thought it was sad, you know, that they had that pop concert to commemorate Diana. I mean, she didn't have much to do with pop music, did she? They should've done something that celebrated what was really great about her life: By staging a gangbang in a minefield."

"Words are supposed to hurt. That's considered a legitimate way of fighting things out. And what did it replace in the historical scene? It replaced actual violence. Words are supposed to be free so we CAN actually fight things out, in the battleplace of ideas, so we don't end up fighting them out in civil wars. If we try to legitimately ban anything can hurt someone's feelings, everyone is reduced to silence."

"Something that I would love to hear people say more are things like "To each his own", "Everyone's entitled to their opinion", "It's a free country". All these old idioms of a free people, I would like to see them make a comeback. And my fingers are crossed, my hopes aren't up, but long term I'm optimistic for free speech because, you know, free speech works. It is a tool for progress, peace, wisdom, authenticity. And I wouldn't bet against it. At least not in the long run."

"Speech should be fruitful as well as free."

"Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins."

"That government only can be pronounced consistent with the design of all government, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what, consistently with the general good, they may desire to do, and which only forbids their doing the contrary. Liberty does not exclude restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people. And the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensably necessary to every law, by which the whole people are to be bound; else the whole people are enslaved to the one, or the few, who frame the laws for them."

"All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people. Power in the people is like light in the sun: native, original, inherent, and unlimited by anything human. In governors it may be compared to the reflected light of the moon, for it is only borrowed, delegated, and limited by the intention of the people; whose it is, and to whom governors are to consider themselves aa responsible, while the people are answerable only to God; — themselves being the losers, if they pursue a false scheme of politics."

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion."

"If you happen into company where the talk runs into party, obscemty, scandal, folly, or vice of any kind, you had better pass for morose or unsocial, among people whose good opinion is not worth having, than shock your own conscience by joining in conversation which you must disapprove of."

"If you would have a right to account of things from illiterate people, let them tell their story in their own way; if you put them upon talking according to logical rules, you will confound them."

"There is no method more likely to cure passion and rashness, than the frequent and attentive consideration of one's own weaknesses: this will work into the mind an habitual sense of the need one has of being pardoned, and will bring down the swelling pride and obstinacy of heart, which are the cause of hasty passion."

"I considered, that history is the inexhaustible mine, out of which political knowledge is to be brought up."

"In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent: so you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery."

"If there be, in any region of the universe, an order of moral agents living in society, whose reason is strong, whose passions and inclinations are moderate, and whose dispositions are turned to virtue, to such an order of happy beings, legislation, administration, and police, with the endlessly various and complicated apparatus of politics, must be in a great measure superfluous. Did reason govern mankind, there would be little occasion for any other government, either monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed. But man, whom we dignify with the honourable title of Rational, being much more frequently influenced, in his proceedings, by supposed interest, by passion, by sensual appetite, by caprice, by any thing, by nothing, than by reason; it has, in all civilized ages and countries, been found proper to frame laws and statutes fortified by sanctions, and to establish orders of men invested with authority to execute those laws, and inflict the deserved punishments upon the violators of them. By such means only has it been found possible to preserve the general peace and tranquillity. But, such is the perverse disposition of man, the most unruly of all animals, that this most useful institution has been generally debauched into an engine of oppression and tyranny over those, whom it was expresly and solely established to defend. And to such a degree has this evil prevailed, that in almost every age and country, the government has been the principal grievance of the people, as appears too dreadfully manifest, from the bloody and deformed page of history. For what is general history, but a view of the abuses of power committed by those, who have got it into their hands, to the subjugation, and destruction of the human species, to the ruin of the general peace and happiness, and turning the Almighty's fair and good world into a butchery of its inhabitants, for the gratification of the unbounded ambition of a few, who, in overthrowing the felicity of their fellow-creatures, have confounded their own?"