Once you leave the womb, conservatives don't care about you until you reach military age. Then you're just what they're looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.
George CarlinI believe myself to be a worthwhile and inventive performer in my own right. [And] I want to be known for what I do best.
George CarlinMost of the time people feel okay. Probably it's because at the moment they're not actually dying.
George CarlinBut then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?
George CarlinWe've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life, not life to years.
George CarlinEarly in my career I was divided because I had the real self underneath: the lawbreaker, the anarchist, the person who swims against the tide, the outsider, the loner, all of that guy. He was my private self, and I had this other side that wanted to be liked in order to do all those things I dreamed of as a little boy. I didn't realize that those things didn't go together until later. And I'm quite sure that my use of acid and peyote helped me accept what was really going on inside of me instead of what I had imposed on myself.
George CarlinI never worry that all hell will break loose. My concern is that only part of hell will break loose and be much harder to detect.
George CarlinGovernment want to tell you things you can't say because they're against the law, or you can't say this because it's against a regulation, or here's something you can't say because its a... secret; "You can't tell him that because he's not cleared to know that." Government wants to control information and control language because that's the way you control thought, and basically that's the game they're in.
George CarlinHere's a bumper sticker I'd like to see... 'We are the Proud Parents of a Child who has resisted his teacher's attempts to bend him to the will of his corporate masters'.
George CarlinSoft rock music isn't rock, and it ain't music. It's just soft. Reminds me of something my third-grade teacher said to us. She said, "You show me a tropical fruit and I'll show you a cocksucker from Guatemala."
George CarlinBaby boomers helped me a great deal in my career. They launched me. They were there for me to sing my song to. And I'm not saying I'm better than anyone, but I think they turned that anti-authority baby boom mentality into their own enemy. Now I identify very closely with their children.
George CarlinReligion is like a pair of shoes.....Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes.
George CarlinThe captain has just turned on the fasten-seat-belt-sign. He didn't mean to, but the joint he was smoking fell in his lap, and when he jumped up, his head hit the switch.
George CarlinHave you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
George CarlinI'm not in show business because I don't have to go to the meetings, I'm just not a part of it, I don't belong to it. When you "belong" to something. You want to think about that word, "belong." People should think about that: it means they own you. If you belong to something it owns you, and I just don't care for that. I like spinning out here like one of those subatomic particles that they can't quite pin down.
George CarlinWhen you look at Earth from that one picture, the one from space, it's really a rather attractive thing. I have nothing against the planet per se. I root for the big comet or asteroid as a way of cleansing the planet. The comet or asteroid 65 million years ago is probably what gave us our opening to replace the reptiles. The greatest entertainment I have in my life is chronicling internally, not necessarily for the public, the slow dissolution of order.
George CarlinAn outsider longing to be on the inside is the same as the soloist longing to work in an ensemble. I get great satisfaction in being a part of the proper - for me - community. I'm uncomfortable with various social groupings and clusterings. But when I'm in the right group, doing the right thing, I get as much satisfaction out of that as anyone who does it all the time.
George CarlinBeing a Dodgers fan led to my first Air Force court-martial, but that's another story.
George CarlinFrisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
George CarlinThe dividend I get [from my compulsion] is the freedom to be totally disorderly in my dreamworld.
George CarlinOn the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way.
George CarlinFor a while, I thought of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief, too. It's a shame everything has to have a label.
George CarlinI would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.
George CarlinI don`t understand a belief that there is an invisible being in the sky who watches over us all the time and keeps score and who throws you in a burning pit. I think that's very limiting, very antihuman. It's the way they devised for helping to control people because if they can make you believe in an invisible man who's going to hurt you later, they can make you believe anything!
George CarlinWhen you visualize the recent past, do you see it as being somewhere over on the left?
George CarlinAnger is a handy term and words are tricky, as we know. What one man perceives as anger, another person - in my case the deliverer of material - is, "Don't you see it, don't you see how badly you're doing?" It's like shaking a child - which you're not supposed to do.
George CarlinFor a long time, I've distinguished between entertainer and performer and entertainer and artist. To me, an entertainer is someone who pleases others, and an artist tries to please himself.
George CarlinIf you take five white guys and put 'em with five black guys, and let 'em hang around together for about a month, and at the end of the month, you'll notice that the white guys are walking and talking and standing like the black guys do. You'll never see the black guys going, "Oh, golly! We won the big game today, yes sir!" But you'll see guys with red hair named Duffy going, "What's happenin'?"
George CarlinIf anyone e-mails you something "by George Carlin," there's a 99 percent chance I did not write it. I didn't write "Paradox Of Our Time." I didn't write "George Carlin On Aging." I didn't write a eulogy for my wife after she died. I didn't write the New Orleans thing. I didn't write "I Am A Bad American." None of them. You know what I've decided to do? I'm going to get a little cheap put-it-together-yourself website called NotMe.com.
George CarlinI don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate.
George Carlin