Real Time with Bill Maher

"He went to Vietnam because as a young man, he thought that was the right thing to do. He saw what was going on in Vietnam, came back, threw his medals away, changed his mind. Is it wrong that a guy goes to the slaughterhouse and comes back a vegetarian? Isn't that what thinking people do?"

"I think people get hung up on the word "religion." Hitlerism, Stalinism, Maoism were state religions. Hirohito in Japan was a god-like figure. The real crux of it is, anytime people give up on logic and put their faith in someone– Kim Jong-il in North Korea, the mythology around him...they said the first time he played golf he had eleven holes-in-one. That's religion!"

"If you think Michelle Obama is after your freedom because she merely suggests our kids should exercise more and eat a little broccoli along with their lard, you don't deserve a place in the free market of ideas, you belong at The Cheesecake Factory. She's not Stalin because she notices your kids sweat Mountain Dew....Now I'm not saying the right objects to Mrs. Obama's efforts because the Teabaggers are stupid, or their hysterical, or because they hate black people, though all of that is true...but what does it say about America when even a First Lady's suggestion has to be controversial? Especially when she picked something no one could disagree with – maybe we should send our kids outside to play."

"The last decade, year, and month are all the hottest on record. And then there's the floods, the killing of the oceans, Category 5 hurricanes, giant wildfires, the vanishing water supply; you know, the little things. And yet deniers say "It's just a theory." As is gravity. Y'know, for progress to happen, certain things have to become not an issue anymore so we can go on to the next issue. Evolutions was an issue until overwhelming support among scientists made it not an issue. Devastating worldwide climate change is happening, whether you phone in for it or not. You can't vote for rain. What's real is what's real, and, like it or not, no one can change the nature of reality. Except with mushrooms and Pabst Blue Ribbon."

"I was watching Andrea Mitchell… talking about debates, and she said, 'A sighing Gore, a sweating Nixon, a seemingly bored Bush, those unfortunate, unscripted moments that voters sometimes remember most.' And I thought, yeah, they remember most because you show it on a loop on your media 24 hours a frigging day! That's why they remember it most! It's not the voters who — it's what the media pick — the media picks out a few moments and they show it over and over again. And then people go, 'Well, Gore sighed; he's toast.'"

"But my question about that whole flap — the Republicans are very angry. Dick Cheney said, 'I'm an angry father.' If it's not shameful to be gay, why are their panties in a bunch about this? I mean… Right? They talk about her like she's some retarded monster they have chained in the attic. You know, if being gay is not that, why is it a controversy to bring her up? … It's an issue in this election. Don't talk about my daughter, who we're trying to discriminate against, in a constitutional amendment."

"And to answer the question that people have about this conspiracy theory that he has a pack in his back, my answer is, if someone was feeding him answers, couldn't they be able to feed him better ones than he came up with?"

"I was watching Ashlee Simpson on Jay's show last night… She was really singing, and I was saying, 'Bring back the lip synch.' …And it struck me that Ashlee Simpson is a lot like George Bush — because she wouldn't even really be in the big leagues if it wasn't for family connections, and she's in way over her head. And she doesn't know what to do. And she blamed her band."

"The key lesson to me of Vietnam is that you cannot outlast insurgents in their own country. This idea that when Bush says, 'Well, we can't say we're going to pull out in six months because they'll only have to wait six months and a day.' They'll wait a hundred frigging years if they have to!"

"Let's be honest - this electorate has switched because that Christian right has taken over the Republican Party. They started it in the '80s with Reagan and Pat Robertson. And like a parasite on a host, they now own it… Let's examine what 'moral values' are. Because I don't think religion always corresponds with moral values. To me — and they're very good at conflating morality with religion, just the way George Bush won election by conflating integrity with monogamy. He ran against Bill Clinton and his terrible blowjob by saying, 'I have integrity.' That's different than monogamy. Okay, the same way, when we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That's different. When they talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values."

"Politically, it's always been advantageous to divide people, to make America a place of warmongers versus wimps, elitists versus morons, gun nuts versus people with normal size penises. The only problem is, it's not true. Hollywood isn't your cesspool, America. It's your mirror."

"I didn't like that he [George W. Bush] lied to get us into this war. I certainly didn't like that it was conducted in such an incompetent way. But now that he's morphed the script from what it was in 2003 to 'I'm the Johnny Appleseed of democracy and we want to bring freedom to the world.' I like that script better, I have to say. I know it was bullshit how we got there. But this script I like better. And it sounds exactly like the script that Carter used to say: human rights, remember that? You can't love it when they said it and hate it when Bush says it. It's the same thing."

"It seems to me like nowadays there's two kinds of issues in America. There's the kind that's too Byzantine and boring for the average Joe to even know what's going on. You know, the environment and the filibusters and the gerrymandering and what did Tom DeLay do on vacation. And then the really stupid issues that they can understand like Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And it seems to me the American people have become completely irrelevant."

"Well, the American public always wanted to vote for a guy — and Bush was the perfect guy — who they'd want to have over for pot-roast. And George Bush is that guy. He does that well. You'd like to have him over for pot-roast. He reminds you of yourself. Okay. Well, now he's been over, he's had the pot-roast. But he's getting drunk and now he's talking about stem cells and Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And now he's the guest that won't leave."

"It's been over a year since they graduated, but neither of the Bush twins has been able to find work. Why don't they sign up [for the army]? Do they hate America or just freedom in general?"

"On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the city of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky! I'm not saying you don't love this country, I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint.""

"New Rule: Stop introducing a new iPod every month. First came the original, then the Mini, then the Shuffle, now the Nano. It's so slim Kate Moss uses it to cut her cocaine."

"On the third day, when they still hadn't done anything, uh, Fidel Castro — this is not a joke! — stepped forward to offer aid. Fidel Castro had to call a news conference to say, "Some President in this hemisphere must do something." Now, what do you think Rush Limbaugh would have said if Bill Clinton had been President when that happened? He would have said, "This country has been brought so low by Bill Clinton, that Fidel Castro, a Mexican, has had to come forward… And, and by the way, Mexico did send us — another not-joke — bottled water. When you are getting clean water from Mexico, you might be a red-neck President…"

"New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that's one of those services that goes along with paying in. I'll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain."

"New Rule: Paula Abdul must go back on drugs. "American Idol" will always have a place in my heart. It's where I met Clay. And what could be more exciting than televised karaoke? But everyone knows the show is most entertaining when Paula is thick-tongued and sleepy-eyed and poised on the brink of yelling, "Who wants to do me?!""

"New Rule: Airplane black boxes must now be made out of Keith Richards. The man, who has taken more drugs than Whitney Houston, Rush Limbaugh and Robert Downey Jr., combined, recently fell out of a tree, and then crashed a jet ski. And yet, somehow, that cigarette never fell out of his mouth. What is this guy still running on? I've got to know. Because I'm beginning to think the future of medicine isn't injecting stem cells, it's injecting heroin."

"I know this is uncomfortable for the "faith over facts" crowd, but the "greatness" of a country can, to a large extent, be measured. Here are some numbers: infant mortality rate, America ranks 48th in the world; overall health, 72nd; freedom of the press, 44; literacy, 55th. Do you realize there are twelve-year-old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with?....In most of the industrialized world nearly everyone has healthcare; and hardly anyone doubts evolution; and yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It's why America isn't gonna be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell research, because Jesus thinks it's too close to cloning."

"When they [Republicans] say "They're going to raise taxes", you say "We have to, because someone spent all the money in the world cutting Paris Hilton's taxes and not killing Osama Bin Laden.""

"New Rule: You can't send the National Guard to Iraq and then claim it's still here. The helicopters, the humvees, the men...like Dorothy and Toto, they're not in Kansas anymore. Sorry, Mr. President, but the last documented case of a National Guardsman able to be in two places at one time... was you."

"iPhone's price reduction wasn't a price cut, it was a reduction of the nerd tax."

"We won't stop being sick until we stop making ourselves sick. Because there is a point where even the most universal government health program can't help you. They can't outlaw unhealthy food, or alcohol, or cigarettes. Just pot, sadly. Because, you see, the government is not your nanny; they're your dealer. And they've subsidized illness in this country. They have to, there's too much money in it. You see, there's no money in healthy people, and there's no money in dead people. The money is in the middle: people who are alive, sort of, but with one or more chronic conditions that puts them in need of Celebrex, or Nasinex, or Valtrex, or Lunesta. Fifty years ago, children didn't even get Type-2 diabetes. Now it's an emerging epidemic, as are a long list of ailments that used to be rare, and have now been...mainstreamed. Things like asthma, and autism, and acid reflux, and arthritis, allergies, adult acne, attention deficit disorder. And that's just the A's. Doesn't anybody wonder why we live with all this illness?"

"In Hillary Clinton's health plan the words "diet" and "exercise" appear once. The word "drugs"? Fourteen times. Just like the pharmaceutical companies wanted. You know, their add weasels like to say "When diet and exercise fail..." Well, diet and exercise don't fail, a fact brought home last week by a new Duke University study that shows exercise – yes, exercise – is just as effective a cure for depression as Paxil and Zoloft. So ask your doctor if getting off your ass is right for you!"

"If you can look at the war in Iraq, the melting environments and the descent of America into "idiocracy," and still think our biggest problems are boobies during the Super Bowl and the "war on Christmas," then you don't have values, you have issues."

"I'm sure if you asked "What would Jesus veto?", it wouldn't be health care for sick kids."

"Why is monotheistic faith better than polytheistic? I mean, either you believe – if you believe in, like, a magic person who can do magic things, why is it different – so different if it's Superman or the Fantastic Four?"