All Quotes

"You see the objectification of women on men's magazines all the time. I accept that, they're trying to move a product. What I don't get is when I walk past a cover of Mademoiselle magazine and I'm like, 'Do you want to fuck me, Heather Graham? Because it looks like you want to fuck me, Heather Graham, and I don't really understand why you have that look on your face, wearing almost nothing on the cover of a women's magazine. Oh, hey, Sarah Jessica Parker! Do you want to fuck me too on the cover of Marie Claire? Because it looks like you like me. I don't know why you're looking at me like that, but I certainly now want to buy this empowering women's magazine."

"Let me just stress that I'm not anti-religion. I know what it's like to be spiritual. I know what it's like to try and think of these things. Now after much deliberation in my thirty-second year of life, I feel that I am not religious. I feel secular and drawn to science. I don't believe. And I'm not saying that's good bad or indifferent. I am not better than anyone who believes. I realize the need in the human condition to feel that there is a being that does things for you and will take care and all that kind of thing. I understand it. I respect you for it. So the thing that kills me though when it comes to religion is very few religious people will refuse to allow you to have your opinion. They will boycott you, they will write a letter, they are allowed to scream from the mountain tops what they believe in. You are not allowed that same thing, you are just wrong, that's all there is to it. It's interesting that when you come from that perspective and you think about what's going on in the world geopolitically and religious-wise whether it's the Taliban fighters, the Muellas, the protestants, the Irish, the Israeli Palestinian conflict. If you are not religious you kind of see it as just insanity and I realize that their issues are not just religious based, but they are about sovereignty and things of that nature but it all goes back to the fact that these seeds were planted on these books. The books of religions which are beautiful works of fiction. They're just lovely. I mean somebody's a great writer. I-- You don't have to applaud that I'm just saying these guys are great writers these guys who wrote and added addendums to suit their fancies and made arbitrary rules these guys are great writers, but the important thing being that we keep the women in the back seat. That's the main gist of all religions because we're scared of the vagina. Somehow it all leads to fear of the vagina. I can hear the typewriters clicking as we speak. So the thing is if you see these books this way and I respect that you may not see them that way, it's like as if in this country we were fighting over Grisham novels, or we had declared the Bridges of Madison County sacred ground whereupon nobody builds. Nobody builds."

"Granted, not really a joke, but how often do you get a mic in your hand? You know? So. I am sorry but don't anybody trip on my soap box on the way out. Don't anybody trip over that. And the chip on my shoulder's a little heavy. I have back problems now."

"To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first."

"I think we all remember where we were when Rush Hour hit the water. That was an important day."

"Red flag of the eating disorder: the muffin. Keep your eye on the ladies with the muffins...and sometimes I'll just eat the muffin top."

"You know what is good about these Dixie Chicks burnings or bashings? It's a wonderful, wonderful way for really stupid people to hook up. They meet, they throw some things on the fire, they talk about Vin Diesel, they tell stories about who their favorite Fox anchor is, they exchange phone numbers and in some cases has led to marriages."

"There's always [on women's magazines] that great photo of the actress or model lifting up her shirt just to show you the bone structure and the six-pack of her own. It's almost like when horses are auctioned and they show you their teeth. 'Am I good enough?'"

"All roads lead to my dogs, don't they?"

"When I see guys in bars wearing the real fitted kind of Calvin Klein v-neck t-shirts I just want to go up to them and be like, 'Oh, do you work out? Your tricep looks so great - thank you.'"

"Hey, who wants to hear the stories about my ruptured ovarian cysts? Do you? It's great. It is a story that has been passed down from generation to generation and we love it. So here's the story. I was looping a film, and I sneezed, and passed out. They thought I had appendicitis so they took me to the hospital, but as it turns out, I had ruptured a series of ovarian cysts that unbeknownst to me were residing in my area, and as you know if you've seen me work before I still have the 'don't ask don't tell' policy with my vagina. I don't bother it. It- She. She minds her own beeswax. I stay up here. She doesn't sass me. You know no back talk. None of that. She's not flippant at all with me. So we had to find out about my cyst by having a very thorough exam by the gynecologist. Again, another cure for hubris if you're suffering from that. Whilst he's down there, he peers up from between my knees and goes 'you know my wife and I... LOVE you on The Larry Sanders Show!' And I was like 'That is so great and now I think you can enjoy it on a whole 'nother level, you and your wife!' And with that I left the office, and the thing is is that I've noticed is that I get recognized rarely but only at inconvenient times when it would be not good to be recognized. There is- uhm.. Whenever I'm coming out of a public restroom. Usually Starbucks, go figure. I don't know why but inevitably someone will be like a fan out of the restroom but let me say this and you know I don't like to work blue and this next theory is not for the squeamish but let me just say this. I'll put it this way. The person who was in the bathroom prior to me? Let's say, compromised the integrity of the room? Shall we say? Kind of had their way with the bowl. And hey man I know the stall she is a harsh mistress sometimes. I know that. I'm no stranger to the fight but, it's not me! You know? And so it's like the person ahead of me who shows no respect and, I'll come out and the person's about to go in and I'm just like 'aw man.' Because you know they're gonna say, 'I saw the girl I don't know what her name is but that girl, she stinks!'"

"It sounds like I'm always being facetious. That's why I never get voice over work. 'You sound like you hate the product.'"

"You know George W. Bush is a war-time president, he says - proudly. Guess what. War is failure! When you are at war, you have failed! When you have gone to a war of choice and lied about it, you're a double-triple, triple-quadruple failure! Or a warlord. It's called a warlord in other countries. A war time president here. One man's ceiling I guess is another man's floor. George Bush is a warlord. He's a failure!"

"Anybody who French bashes just might as well wear a badge that says 'I am a follower! I don't think for myself and I have no idea what I'm talking about.' That would be a French basher."

"To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that."

"Unbelievable! Unbelieveable! No stem-cell research. Can't have stem-cell research. Can't have reproductive rights. But by God we can bomb the shite out of anybody in the world! And we can have policies that are put forth by the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, and CAFTA and NAFTA that will destroy lives. That will destroy the environment. That will harm fetal development. I mean is it not insanity? Is it not so obvious at this point to some people, to most people rather that this Bush administration is now uh- comically! comically uhm --I don't even know what the word is! I can't think of the word! I can't think of words!"

"The majority of Americans, there is no doubt about it, they support a woman's right to choose. They support the separation of church and state. They support environmental protections. They support laws that regulate business, because remember deregulation is essentially lawlessness. And the bankruptcy bill and the energy bill that the Bush administration has pushed are gifts to big business and the majority of Americans, if they were to understand that, if their news media did their job, they wouldn't support it. They just wouldn't. And also they are just too busy in the course of a day, living their lives, and putting their kids through school, and putting food on the table, to hate gay people and black people and women enough, and to pray for the end of days enough, as the Bush administration would like them to. As you know there's a number of lawsuits filed against No Child Left Behind because the government has required that schools adhere to No Child Left Behind, yet haven't funded it! Of course they haven't! Of course they haven't, because the Bush regime doesn't believe in funding education because if you fund education you will have a more educated populace. If you have a more educated populace, you will have critical thinking. If you have critical thinking, you cannot push this agenda that they have and you won't have as many people that are so willing to serve in the armed forces for Dick Cheney. Y'know, if you have a more educated, knowledgable, critically-thinking populace, they will be less willing to fight and die for Dick Cheney! You know it really is that simple. And most people join the army, navy, air force, marines, to pay for their education, to better themselves, to see the world. That is fine, but if the young people are joining the armed forces to protect democracy, you gotta stay here! Because we need that here. We are losing democracy all the time under the Bush regime and Theocracy, where it will be fine, but it's just gonna take awhile."

"The new Republican party. Accountability last. If ever. That is the Republican party. Now I am confident we progressives, we liberals, can change this, but it's gonna take a lot of work and we can hustle it along faster: you know the universe does tilt towards justice eventually, but we can make it tilt faster if we continue to work together in Democratic circles, liberal circles, progressive circles, libertarian circles, and true conservative circles to try and change the type of people we elect and the type of news media we have and the type of pundits we allow to pollute our airwaves. Myself included. I shouldn't be a pundit. I don't know why I am, but they asked me to, and once your name is in the rolodex, you're in. So sometimes I go on -yeah I stink. I'm a stinky pundit! ...well, compared to the pundits they have I'm fantastic! But in the real world, I stink, and should not be a pundit."

"...because we don't have a Fairness Doctrine, and because we have further media consolidation, and because we have a craptastic corporate media, WE DON'T HAVE NEWS! We don't have an informed populous and we don't have a democracy... Everyone in the world knows that America, (in its current state, because of right-wingers) that the right wing arm of this country (that speaks for this country unfortunately) has no credibility when it comes to human rights or independent media."

"It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire."

"Distance is a great promoter of admiration!"

"From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step."

"If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him."

"We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates."

"What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days. You judge of the continuous existence of the world, as an ephemeral insect might judge of yours. The world is eternal for you, as you are eternal to the being that lives but for one instant. Yet the insect is the more reasonable of the two. For what a prodigious succession of ephemeral generations attests your eternity! What an immeasurable tradition! Yet shall we all pass away, without the possibility of assigning either the real extension that we filled in space, or the precise time that we shall have endured. Time, matter, space — all, it may be, are no more than a point."

"As to all the outward signs that awaken within us feelings of sympathy and compassion, the blind are only affected by crying; I suspect them in general of lacking humanity. What difference is there for a blind man, between a man who is urinating, and man who, without crying out, is bleeding? And we ourselves, do we not cease to commiserate, when the distance or the smallness of the objects in question produce the same effect on us as the lack of sight produces in the blind man? All our virtues depend on the faculty of the senses, and on the degree to which external things affect us. Thus I do not doubt that, except for the fear of punishment, many people would not feel any remorse for killing a man from a distance at which he appeared no larger than a swallow. No more, at any rate, than they would for slaughtering a cow up close. If we feel compassion for a horse that suffers, but if we squash an ant without any scruple, isn’t the same principle at work?"

"When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner."

"Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things."

"Il y a un peu de testicule au fond de nos sentiments les plus sublimes et de notre tendresse la plus épurée."

"There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies."

"Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man — it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country."

"The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid."

"L'esprit de l'escalier"

"It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none."

"Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land."

"As for our celebrated lawgivers, who have cast us in our present awkward mold, you may be sure that they have acted to serve their interests and not ours. Witness all our political, civil, and religious institutions — examine them thoroughly: unless I am very much mistaken, you will see how, through the ages, the human race has been broken to the halter that a handful of rascals were itching to impose. Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control."

"The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum."

"How old the world is! I walk between two eternities... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don’t want to die!"

"I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep."

"Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey."

"Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois."

"The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be, and all these philosophers and ministers and truth-telling men who have fallen victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death? This: That prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour out the vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O Posterity! Holy and sacred stay of the unhappy and the oppressed; thou who art just, thou who art incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy consoling faith never, never abandon me!"

"Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory."

"The best doctor is the one you run for and can't find."

"[Africans are] always vicious... mostly inclined to lasciviousness, vengeance, theft and lies."

"Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other."

"There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it."

"I am beginning to feel that I am growing old; soon, I shall have to eat mush like children. I shall no longer be able to speak, which will be a rather great advantage for others and but a small inconvenience for myself.... The time in which I count in years is gone; that in which I count in days is here.... I had thought that the fibers of the heart would grow callous with age, it's not at all the case. I am not sure that my sensitivity hasn't increased; everything moves me, affects me.... To fade out between a man feeling your pulse and another bothering your head; not to know where one comes from, why one came, where one is going ..."

"I believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists... It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God."

"There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint."