George Carlin

George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlinwas an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic and author. Carlin was noted for his black comedy and his thoughts on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and various taboo subjects. Carlin and his "Seven dirty words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5–4 decision affirmed the government's power to regulate indecent material on the public airwaves...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth12 May 1937
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
There was a built-in audience for the rebel in me that had been all along not expressing himself.
I just try to find targets I feel something about and express it my way.
If there were only one cherry pie in the world, and Bill Clinton owned it, I might get a piece of it. If Bush or Reagan owned it, you'd have to kill them to get a piece of pie. That's my feeling about Bill. And Bill's a good bullshitter. America likes a good bullshitter. That's one of the reasons he was re-elected. Honesty has no place in politics. It would throw everything off.
I think there's a little more attention to human needs than to property rights. But I don't think much of political activism. It's so shortsighted. Most people are interested in their own personal comfort. I've said that about environmentalists. I think they care about bike paths and places to park their Volvos, not the planet as an abstraction.
People who own everything know how to relax a little and bend and exhale once in a while, but they're not going to let it get out of control.
Grass [marijuana] probably helped me as much as it hurt me. Especially as a performer. When you're high, it's easy to kid yourself about how clever certain mediocre pieces of material are. But, on the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way.
The ending of my experience with cocaine came in a periodic way. I would get high less frequently, I would use smaller amounts, and I would do coke for less periods of time. And that process just kept increasing and increasing until I wasn't using it at all. I didn't go on a program anywhere. I didn't join an organization or detox anywhere. I just slowly tapered off until it was gone. That was also true of my heavy pot use. I just tapered off until there was almost no use at all. And the same thing was true of drinking tons of beer.
I like my jokes to be built on a foundation of ideas, or at least smart observations.
I 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!
The only good thing about religion is the music. Because nature is filled with balances and opposites, there are always exceptions to the overall rules, whether the overall rules are bleak or otherwise. If you propound a joyous theory of existence, I will find an exception to that. If I propound a bleak theory, someone will find a joyous exception. That's just nature being nature, I think, and I don't think it offers a lot of hope. It's sort of a respite along the way.
You can't be the fastest gun in town forever. There comes a time when you're not the golden boy, and you have to go off somewhere and figure yourself out.
The first obligation I have is to be funny; it's my first impulse and an instinct. I like being funny and finding the jokes.
When you quit school at an early age, I think you have a lifelong need to show the world - and maybe yourself - that you're really smart after all.
My history of moving away from drugs is not the kind you hear from most people. Certainly not from celebrities, especially those professionally recovering people. What I've noticed in my overuse of cocaine is the period of pleasure versus the period of pain. That is to say that when you first get high on anything, the pleasure is predominant and you don't pay much price. A little hangover or whatever it might be with another drug. But after a while the ratio begins to change, and there' s far more pain in the deal than pleasure. It just completely goes in another direction.