All Quotes

"Paul Gauguin, then [March 1885] still a Parisian stockbroker, had entered art as a collector of impressionist paintings and thus came in contact with Camille Pissarro. When Gauguin began to paint, it was Pissarro who got his works admitted to the exhibitions of the impressionist group. During his stay at Osny in 1883 [with old Pissarro] Gauguin painted the entrance to the village at Pissarro's side."

"Gauguin's work is symbolic, and he himself is a myth. He rejected the values of bourgeois society and of a machine civilization. His gesture had its sordid side, but retrospectively it seems to have been appropriate, coming at a time when the world was preparing for annihilating wars. It was not a useful example: we cannot all go and live on South Sea islands, and, as I have said before in this connection, modern man carries his civilization like a pack on his back, and cannot cast if off. But he can nevertheless protest against the burden, and state the real values of life. So Gauguin did, in paintings that are symbols of eternal truths, images of great beauty and serenity."

"The last thing that Bonnard and Vuillard and Matisse [artists of Nabis wanted to do was paint portentous allegories about the destiny of mankind, as Gauguin did."

"The popular fancy that Gauguin 'discovered himself' as a painter in Tahiti is quite wrong. All the components of his work — the flat patterns of colour, the wreathing outlines, the desire to make symbolic statements about fate and emotion, the interest in 'primitive' art, and the thought that color could function as a language - were assembled in France before 1891."

"One may wonder if any painter in the last century put more meaning into his sense of color than Gauguin."

"Gauguin was a great writer and I just read Noa, Noa, and Van Gogh wrote the most amazing autobiography."

"Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong."

"I’m not nearly so anxious about the lousy Communists as I am about lazy Americans."

"In times like these, it's helpful to remember that there have always been times like these."

"We sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in their silos. Even now, we're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies, more moral, more civilized. Our image is at stake, we insist. But we didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on, to grab this land from whomever, and we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. And so it goes with most great nation-states, which feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business, and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry, up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy."

"This is the highest honor I have received since 60-some years ago, when Angel said "I do.""

"Tomorrows forecast for Afghanistan cloudy and ten thousand degrees. September 12, 2001"

"Hello, Americans, This is Paul Harvey. Standby for news."

"Good morning Americans ..."

"Page Two ..."

"And now … Page Three"

"Page Four ..."

"Join me later today for this "Rest of the Story" story … over this ABC Radio Network station."

"Hello Americans, I'm Paul Harvey. You know what the news is -- in a minute, you're going to hear the rest of the story."

"And now you know -- the rest of the story."

"Paul Harvey … Good Day!"

"Just what not why..."

"It's not one world."

"Not all that we call progress is progress."

"Today's quote worth requoting..."

"Now wash out your ears with this."

"Now … for what it's worth."

"In USA Today … today."

"In shirt-sleeve English ..."

"Holy Shamoley ..."

"And now … over my shoulder a backward glance ..."

"Shop talk ..."

"Man—despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments—owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."

"Paul Harvey was the most listened to man in the history of radio. … There is no one who will ever come close to him."

"You can't put tits and ass on the marquee!...Why not?...Because it's dirty and vulgar, that's why not!... Titties are dirty and vulgar?...Okay, we'll compromise. How about Latin? Gluteus maximus, pectoralis majors nightly...That's alright, that's clean, class with ass, I'll buy it...Clean to you, schmuck, but dirty to the Latins!"

"The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."

"I'll die young, but it's like kissing God."

"I want to perform an unnatural act."

"A Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as a descendant 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... there should be a statute of limitations for that crime."

"I was arrested for using a ten-letter word that began with ‘c,’ and I would marry no woman who was not one."

"Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? "Are there any niggers here tonight?" I know there's one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let's see, there's two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there's another kike— that's two kikes and three niggers. And there's a spic. Right? Hmm? There's another spic. Ooh, there's a wop; there's a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there's three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there's one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, "I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet," and if he'd just say "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" to every nigger he saw, "boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie," "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" 'til nigger didn't mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school."

"The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds."

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

"Let me tell you the truth. The truth is what is, and what should be is a fantasy. A terrible, terrible lie that someone gave to the people long ago."

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

"Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government.""

"Life is a four-letter word."

"In the Halls of Justice, the only justice is in the halls."

", in one of his forensic flights, once described Lenny's hotel as "the on elegant .” The Marlton was, indeed, just a few doors west of Fifth Avenue, but it belonged exclusively to the honky-tonk world of , which it fronted with a façade so narrow-shouldered and a lobby so inconspicuous that you could walk up and down the street for years and never notice this tiny fleabag."

"Lenny Bruce's legacy is freedom of speech and telling it as it is, getting your life and putting it out on the table, telling everyone about it."