You know what I’m proud of? Never fucked a One. ibid.
I’d like to talk a little bit about the War in the Persian Gulf. Big doings in the Persian Gulf. You know my favourite part of that war? It’s the first war we ever had that was on every channel plus cable. And the war got good ratings too, didn’t it? Got good ratings. Well, we like war. We like war. We are a warlike people. We like war because we’re good at it. And d’ya know why we’re good at it? ’Cause we get a lot of practice. This country is only 200 years old and already we’ve had ten major wars. We average a major war every twenty years in this country. So we’re good at it. And it’s a good thing we are, we’re not very good at anything else any more. Hah? We can’t build a decent car. We can’t build a decent TV set or a VCR worth a fuck, got no steel industry left, can’t educate our young people, can’t get healthcare for the old people, but we can bomb the shit out of your country, all right ... Especially if your country is full of brown people. Oh we like that, don’t we? That’s our hobby. That’s our new job in the world - bombing brown people! Iraq, Panama, Granada, Libya, you got some brown people in your country, tell em to watch the fuck out! Or we’re goddamn bomb them! ... Now you probably noticed I don’t feel about that war the way we were told, the way we were supposed to feel about that war, the way we were ordered and instructed by the United States government to feel about that war – you see, I tell ya, my mind doesn’t work that way – I got this real moron thing I do – it’s called thinking. And I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions! I don’t just roll over when I’m told to. Sad to say most Americans just roll over on command – not me. I have certain rules I live by. My first rule – I don’t believe anything the government tells me. Nothing! Zero! Nope! And I don’t take very seriously the media or the press in this country, who in the case of the Persian War were nothing more than unpaid employees of the Department of Defense, and who most of the time, most of the time, functioned as a kind of... unofficial public relations agency for the United States government. So I don’t listen to them. I don’t really believe in my country. And I got to tell you, folks, I don’t get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags – I consider them to be symbols – and I mean symbols – to the simple-minded. Me, I look at war a little bit differently. To me war is a lot of price waving, OK? A simple thing, OK? A whole lot of men standing in a field waving their pricks at each other ... It’s called dick-fear ... Basically, men are killing each other in order to improve their self-esteem ... the bombs and the rockets and the bullets are all shaped like dicks. It’s a subconscious need to project the penis into other people’s affairs. It’s called fucking with people! So, as far as I’m concerned, that whole thing in the Persian Gulf was nothing more a big prick-waving dick-fight ... What did we do in Vietnam? We pulled out … George Carlin, We Like War, on stage New York
I enjoy chaos and disorder – not just because they help me professionally. ibid.
A series of things that are pissing me off … I have major psychotic hatreds … airport security … George Carlin, You Are All Diseased HBO 1999 audio
There are no bombs. The whole thing is fucking pointless. ibid.
Never mind ordinary germs – what are you going to do when some super-virus coming along that turns your internal organs like liquid shit? ibid.
Have we had enough of this cigar-smoking shit in this country? … A big brown dick. ibid.
He’s not going to attack children, is he? Yes he is … Your children are overrated and overvalued. ibid.
A Stevie Wonder song: I just called to say I tested positive. ibid.
Speaking of cattle fucking: Do you know why it is when a rancher fucks a sheep he does so at the edge of a cliff? It’s so the sheep will push back. ibid.
Pure American bullshit … This entire country is completely full of shit and always has been. ibid.
People treat God rather rudely … Most of this praying takes place on Sunday, His day off. It’s not nice … They pray for a lot of different things … Most of all, you’d really like to fuck that red-head down at the convenience store. ibid.
I just feel betrayed by the bullshit in America that’s all around us. George Carlin’s American Dream I II, Sky Documentaries 2022
I think I saw religion as the first great betrayal … I began to see that they were lying to me. From then on I really never believed much in authority, and I think that I am right. ibid.
He told me he was influenced by Lenny Bruce. ibid. Burns
I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. George Carlin
cf.
I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find the line, cross the line, bow to the line, and snort the line. esias
Comedy must smash all taboos and reduce the human condition to its clear, base condition. We snicker at this hell to snatch a slice of heaven. esias
What, in thy quips and thy quiddities? William Shakespeare, I Henry IV I ii 50
Are you a comedian? William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night I v 175, Olivia
It is the business of the comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind. William Congreve, 1670-1729, The Double Dealer
Every man has, some time in his life, an ambition to be a wag. Samuel Johnson
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl. Charlie Chaplin
Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people. Angela Carter, Wise Children
Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life. Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poetry
Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportionate to ourselves, and nature. Delight hath a joy in it either permanent or present. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling. ibid.
Comedy naturally wears itself out – destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weakness of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. William Hazlitt, The Round Table, 1817
Life doesn’t make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy’s job is to point out that it doesn’t make sense, and that it doesn’t make much difference anyway. Eric Idle
Comedy is defiance. It’s a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it’s the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale. Will Durst
Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads. Denis Leary
Comedy keeps the heart sweet. Mark Twain
The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old – that is life’s tragedy. Oscar Wilde
It doesn’t hurt my feeling when I get vilified by fundamentalist religious people. I’ve actually made comedy out of it. I’ve made light of that. Richard Dawkins
The energy that otherwise would have been used to repress a desire is saved by joking – which allows aggression to be released. Sigmund Freud
I’ve always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy. Making people laugh one moment and the next making them feel really uncomfortable. Steve Coogan
I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things – because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn’t laugh you’d kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy. Woody Allen
A hero of the American counter-culture George Carlin is revered as one of the most outspoken comedians of his and any other generation. In a fifty-year career which sadly ended when Carlin died in 2008 he constantly challenged establishment values, as in his notorious routine Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on TV: ‘Animals are fine on TV. I’d like to tell a story about a cock and a pussy and a beaver and an ass.’ 100 Greatest Stand Ups 2012
He [Bill Hicks] was disappointed in humanity in a way. And was angry because he wanted it to be better. And would talk about these outrages. Richard Belzer