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"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious. I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty; and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms. I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect. I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society. I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run. I believe in the reality of progress. I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant."

- H. L. Mencken

• 0 likes• Humorists from the United States• Essayists from the United States• Journalists from the United States• Columnists from the United States• Historians from the United States•
"The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, decided all by itself that radio and television were the only two parts of American life not protected by the free speech provisions of the first amendment to the Constitution. I'd like to repeat that, because it sounds... *vaguely* important! The FCC, an appointed body, not elected, answerable only to the president, decided on its own that radio and television were the only two parts of American life not protected by the first amendment to the Constitution. Why did they decide that? Because they got a letter from a minister in Mississippi! A Reverend Donald Wildman in Mississippi heard something on the radio that he didn't like. Well, Reverend, did anyone ever tell you there are two KNOBS on the radio? Two. Knobs. On the radio. Of course, I'm sure the reverend isn't that comfortable with anything that has two knobs on it. But hey, reverend, there are two knobs on the radio! One of them turns the radio OFF, and the other one [slaps his head] CHANGES THE STATION! Imagine that, reverend, you can actually change the station! It's called freedom of choice, and it's one of the principles this country was founded upon. Look it up in the library, reverend, if you have any of them left when you've finished burning all the books."

- George Carlin

• 0 likes• Comedians from the United States• Actors from New York City• Stand-up comedians from the United States• Singers from the United States• Screenwriters from the United States•
"People I can do without. This is my list: guys in their fifties named "Skip." Anyone who pays for vaginal jelly with an Exxon credit card. An airline pilot who has on two different shoes. A proctologist with poor depth perception. A pimp who drives a Toyota Corolla. A gynecologist who wants my wife to have three or four drinks before the examination. Guys with a lot of small pins on their hats. Anyone who mentions Jesus more than three hundred times in a two-minute conversation. A dentist with blood in his hair. Any woman whose hobby is breast-feeding zoo animals. A funeral director who says "Hope to see you folks again real soon!" Girls who get drunk and throw up at breakfast. A man with only one lip. A Boy Scout master who owns a dildo shop. People who actually know the second verse to "The Star-Spangled Banner." Any lawyer who refers to the police as the "Federalies." A cross-eyed nun with a bullwhip and a bottle of gin! A brain surgeon with "Born to Lose" tattooed on his hands. Couples whose children's names all start with the same initials. A man in a hospital gown directing traffic. A waitress with a visible infection on her serving hand. People who have large gums and small teeth. Guys who wear the same underwear until it begins to cut off the circulation to their feet. And any man whose arm hair completely covers his wristwatch. All right, that's enough of that."

- George Carlin

• 0 likes• Comedians from the United States• Actors from New York City• Stand-up comedians from the United States• Singers from the United States• Screenwriters from the United States•
"We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: "save the planet." What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet! We don't care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet? I'm getting tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day. I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract, they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me. The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ... hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ... And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn't going anywhere. WE are! We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ... The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" "Plastic... asshole.""

- George Carlin

• 0 likes• Comedians from the United States• Actors from New York City• Stand-up comedians from the United States• Singers from the United States• Screenwriters from the United States•
"Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't wanna fuck in the first place? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about you until you reach military age. Then they think you're just fine. Just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life... pro-life... These people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro-life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it? They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state."

- George Carlin

• 0 likes• Comedians from the United States• Actors from New York City• Stand-up comedians from the United States• Singers from the United States• Screenwriters from the United States•
"A lot of these cultural crimes I've been complaining about can be blamed on the Baby Boomers, something else I'm getting tired of hearing about...whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: "GIMME IT, IT'S MINE!" "GIMME THAT, IT'S MINE!" These people were given everything. Everything was handed to them. And they took it all: sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and they stayed loaded for 20 years and had a free ride. But now they're staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, and they don't like it. So they've turned self-righteous. They want to make things harder on younger people. They tell 'em, abstain from sex, say no to drugs; as for the rock and roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago...so they could buy pasta machines and stairmasters and soybean futures! They're cold, bloodless people. It's in their slogans, it's in their rhetoric: "No pain, no gain." "Just do it." "Life is short, play hard." "Shit happens, Deal with it." "Get a life." These people went from 'do your own thing' to 'just say No'. They went from 'love is all you need' to 'whoever winds up with the most toys wins'. And they went from cocaine to Rogaine. And you know something, they're still counting grams, only now it's fat grams. And the worst of it is, the rest of us have to watch these commercials on TV for Levi's loose-fitting jeans and fat-ass Docker pants, because these degenerate yuppie Boomer cocksuckers couldn't keep their hands off the croissants and the Häagen-Dazs, and their big fat asses have spread all over and they have to wear fat-ass Docker pants. Fuck these Boomers, fuck these yuppies—and fuck everybody, now that I think of it. [beat] Sometimes, in comedy, you have to generalize."

- George Carlin

• 0 likes• Comedians from the United States• Actors from New York City• Stand-up comedians from the United States• Singers from the United States• Screenwriters from the United States•
"Living in this country, you're bound to know, every time you're exposed to advertising, you realize once again that America's leading industry, America's most profitable business is still: the manufacture, packaging, distribution and marketing of bullshit. High-quality, grade-A, prime-cut, pure, American bullshit. And the sad part is, is that most people seem to have been indoctrinated to believe that bullshit only comes from certain places, certain sources: advertising, politics, salesmen – not true. Bullshit is everywhere. Bullshit is rampant. Parents are full of shit, teachers are full of shit, clergymen are full of shit, and law enforcement people are full...of...shit – this entire country. This entire country is completely full of shit, and always has been. From the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution to the Star-Spangled Banner, it's still nothing more than one big steaming pile of red, white and blue, all-American bullshit. Because, think of how we started. Think of that. This country was founded by a group of slave-owners who told us all men are created equal. Oh yeah, all men, except for Indians and niggers and women, right? I always like to use that authentic American language. This was a small group of unelected, white, male, land-holding, slave-owners who also suggested their class be the only one allowed to vote. Now, that is what's known as being stunningly and embarrassingly full of shit. And I think Americans really show their ignorance when they say they want their politicians to be honest. What are these fuckin' cretins talking about? If honesty were suddenly introduced into American life, the whole system would collapse! No one would know what to do! Honesty would FUCK THIS COUNTRY UP!!"

- George Carlin

• 0 likes• Comedians from the United States• Actors from New York City• Stand-up comedians from the United States• Singers from the United States• Screenwriters from the United States•
"And here… as long as we’re talking about theme restaurants, I got a proposition for you. I think if white people are gonna burn down black churches, then black people ought to burn down the House of Blues! Huh? What a fucking disgrace that place is! The House of Blues… they ought to call it the House of Lame White Motherfuckers; inauthentic, low frequency, single-digit, lame, white motherfuckers… especially these male movie stars who think they’re blues artists. You ever see these guys? Don’t you just wanna puke in your soup when one of these fat, balding, overweight, overaged, out of shape, middle aged, male movie stars with sunglasses jumps onstage and starts blowing into a harmonica? It’s a fucking sacrilege! In the first place, white people got no business playing the blues ever at all under any circumstances ever, ever, ever! What the fuck do white people have to be blue about? Banana Republic ran out of khakis? Huh? The espresso machine is jammed? Hootie and the Blowfish are breaking up? Shit, white people ought to understand their job is to give people the blues, not to get them… and certainly not to sing or play them. Tell you a little secret about the blues; it’s not enough to know which notes to play, you gotta know why they need to be played, and another thing… I don’t think white people should be trying to dance like blacks. Stop that! Stick to your faggoty polkas and waltzes and that repulsive country line-dancing shit that you do and be yourself, be proud, be white, be lame, and get the fuck off the dance floor!"

- George Carlin

• 0 likes• Comedians from the United States• Actors from New York City• Stand-up comedians from the United States• Singers from the United States• Screenwriters from the United States•
"It's ridiculous and it goes to ridiculous lengths! In prisons, before they give you a lethal injection, they swab your arm with alcohol! It's true! It's true. It's true! Well, they don't want you to get an infection! And you can see their point: wouldn't want some guy to go to Hell and be sick! It would take all the sportsmanship out of the whole execution. Fear of germs? Why, these bunch of goddamn pussies! You can't even get a decent hamburger anymore. They cook the shit out of everything now, 'cause everybody's afraid of food poisoning! Hey, where's your sense of adventure? Take a fucking chance, will ya? You know how many people die in this country from food poisoning every year? Nine thousand! That's all - it's a minor risk! Take a fucking chance, bunch of goddamn pussies! Besides, what do you think you have an immune system for? It's for killing germs! But it needs practice. It needs germs to practice on. So listen, if you kill all the germs around you and live a completely sterile life, then when germs do come along, you're not gonna be prepared. And never mind ordinary germs. What are you gonna do when some supervirus comes along that turns your vital organs into liquid shit? I'll tell you what you're gonna do. You're gonna get sick, you're gonna die, and you're gonna deserve it 'cause you're fucking weak and you've got a fucking weak immune system!"

- George Carlin

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- George Carlin

• 0 likes• Comedians from the United States• Actors from New York City• Stand-up comedians from the United States• Singers from the United States• Screenwriters from the United States•