George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and social critic.
A scary dream makes your heart beat faster. Why doesn't the part of your brain that controls your heartbeat realize that another part of your brain is making the whole thing up? Don't these people communicate?
Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage. I've always written in the long format, five, eight, 10-minute pieces rather than one-liners, so since writing books, the process hasn't changed much. A piece in my live routine can end up as part of one of my HBO specials, and it can also end up in one of the books.
I'm thinking of buying a church and changing it around: maybe selling crack and having a few whores in the pew.
I went to my old school, where all the kids I'd been with for eight years were about to graduate. But the sisters wanted me to repeat the whole term; so I went to the principal and pleaded with her to allow me to graduate with my class. She finally agreed on the condition that I write the graduation play. It was called How Do You Spend Your Leisure Time?Catchy title, huh?
A dog has no shame. If he can do it, you can watch.
I became a guy who wanted to be a comedian someday, or a comic actor. The way I put it was, I'll be like Danny Kaye. He was kind of the model I had in mind.
Dogs and cats get put to sleep; hogs and cows get slaughtered.
I wanted to get a job as a gynecologist, but I couldn't find an opening.
People love to admit they have bad handwriting or that they can't do math. And they will readily admit to being awkward: 'I'm such a klutz!' But they will never admit to having a poor sense of humor or being a bad driver.
There are an awful lot of things in the cut of street drugs that eventually make you sick. I reached a point where the skin around the edges of my fingernails used to hurt all the time. And it would peel away easily. Now, that must have been from some poison in the cut.
Why do 'slow down' and 'slow up' mean the same thing? Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?
Cigarette companies market heavily to young people. They need young customers because their product kills the older ones. It is the only product that, if used as intended, kills the consumer.
Everybody in America is a part of this big herd of cattle being led to the marketplace, not to be sold, which is usual with cattle, but to do the buying. And everyone is branded. You see the brands - Nike, Puma, Coke - all over their bodies. Pretty soon you'll go to a family and say, "$100,000 if we can tattoo Pepsi on your child's forehead, and we'll have it removed when he's twenty-one. A hundred grand. "
Now, some people do this for shock value. Shock is just another uptown word for surprise. Granted it has a different quality to it, but a joke is about surprising someone. I'm a great believer in context. You can joke about anything. I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it and bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did.
How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette?
Age is a hell of a price to pay for wisdom.
Why do they bother saying "raw sewage"? Do some people actually cook that stuff?
If you had chicken at lunch and chicken at dinner, do you ever wonder if the two chickens knew each other?
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
Test of Metal: Will of Iron, Nerves of Steel, Heart of Gold, Balls of Brass.