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1. But folks I have to tell you in the bullshit department a businessman can’t hold a candle to a clergyman. Because when it comes to bullshit, bigtime major-league bullshit, you have to stand in awe – in awe – of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims – Religion. No contest. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people, many of them adults, that there’s an invisible man who lives in the sky and watches everything they do, every minute of every day, and has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to remain and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever to the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money. He always needs money. He is all-powerful, all perfect, all-knowing and all-wise, somehow he just can’t handle money. Religion takes in billions of dollars, pays no taxes and somehow they always need a little more. Now you talk about a good bullshit story – holy shit! George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty audio
I make fun of people who are religious because I think they are fundamentally weak. But I want you to know that on a personal level when it comes to believing in God I tried. I mean I really really tried. I tried to believe that there’s a God who created us in his own image, loves us very much, then keeps a close eye on things. I tried to believe it. But I gotta tell you, the longer you live, and the more you look around, the more you realise something is fucked up. Something is wrong. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the resumé of a supreme being. This is the kind of stuff you’d expect from the office temp with a bad attitude. In any well managed universe this guy would have been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. So if there is a God, if there is, I think reasonable people might agree he is at least incompetent and maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t give a shit. Which I admire in a person. And which would explain a lot of his results. George Carlin, More Napalm and Silly Putty
If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him. George Carlin
Life is worth losing. George Carlin
When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat. George Carlin
So I say, Live and Let Live. That’s my motto. Live and let live. Anyone who can’t go along with that, take him outside and shoot the motherfucker. It’s a simple philosophy, but it’s always worked in our family. George Carlin
I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It’s so fuckin’ heroic. George Carlin
So, have a little fun. Soon enough you’ll be dead and burning in Hell with the rest of your family. George Carlin, Brain Droppings
People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point. George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
Guido von List … An elite class of priest-rulers … ‘Why do you seek a hell in the next world? Is not the Hell in which we live and which burns inside us sufficiently dreadful?’ Hitler’s Last Secrets s1e4: Hitler & the Occult, 2008
Life is just a series of peaks and troughs. And you don’t know whether you’re in a trough until you’re climbing out, or on a peak until you’re coming down. And that’s it, you know, you never know what’s round the corner. But it’s all good. If you want the rainbow, you’ve gotta put up with the rain. Do you know which philosopher said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she’s just a big pair of tits. The Office UK s2e6: Interview s2e6, Brent, BBC 2006
One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name. Thomas Mordaunt, attributions inc Walter Scott
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live and take comfort. Thou has left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee. Thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies
And love, And man’s unconquerable mind. William Wordsworth, Toussaint L’Ouverture, 1807
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind ...
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind. William Wordsworth, Ode Intimations of Immortality, 1807
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith’s transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know. William Wordsworth, The River Duddon
I recoil and droop, and seek repose
In listlessness from vain perplexity;
Unprofitably travelling toward the grave. William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1850
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, ’cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very very
Mad World. Tears for Fears, Mad World
Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle,
God’s up there,
The devil’s down there
And here am I.
Trapped.
In the middle. esias, Life is a Steaming Pile of Donkey Doo-Doos, 1996
If Life were the Jeremy Kyle Show, we’d be grilling God on stage as the abusive parent. esias, essay ‘The Trouble With God’
I’ll tell you what happened – I just ran out of bullshit. Am I still on the air? I don’t know any other way to say it other than I just ran out of Bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can’t think of any reasons of our own we have the God bullshit. [inaudible] ... going through all this pointless pain and humiliation and decay, so they’d better be someone somewhere who does know – that’s the God bullshit. Network 1976 starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Wesley Addy & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield & Conchata Ferrell et al, director Sidney Lumet
Yeah, Tom, what is it? He’s saying that Life is Bullshit. And it is. So what are you screaming about? ibid.
If there’s anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature – believe me, that man is full of bullshit. ibid.