Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was watching Ashlee Simpson on Jay's show last night... She was really singing, and I was saying, 'Bring back the lip synch'... And it struck me that Ashlee Simpson is a lot like George Bush - because she wouldn't even really be in the big leagues if it wasn't for family connections, and she's in way over her head. And she doesn't know what to do. And she blamed her band.
I'm more likely to not invite someone back for not talking. If someone talks a lot, I can usually shut them up and control them. But with people who don't talk, if they don't really want to talk, they probably shouldn't be on this show, and that's fine. They're talented people with things to say, but sometimes people say what they have to say through other means than arguing.
New Rule: You're never going to pick up women at a coffee shop pretending to be working on your laptop. You don't look like you're sensitive, you look like you're homeless.The last guy to pick up a chick with an Apple was Adam. And when you sit across from another dateless loser with a laptop, it still doesn't look like you're working--it looks like you're playing Battleship.
New Rule: Stop asking Miss USA contestants if they believe in evolution. It’s not their field. It’s like asking Stephen Hawking if he believes in hair scrunchies. Here’s what they know about: spray tans, fake boobs and baton twirling. Here’s what they don’t know about: everything else. If I cared about the uninformed opinions of some ditsy beauty queen, I’d join the Tea Party.
I'm definitely good. I'm not bad; I'm extremely honest, and I allow no bullshit to pass by my radar. And that will always get lots of people thinking you're a jerk. But there are people who appreciate total honesty and questioning of the conformities in our society, and I'm heroic to those people. And I should be. It's an indictment of the rest of society who doesn't get that.
Reverend Ted Haggard's followers still think he's not gay. I'm not kidding. In their world, there are no gay people. There are just straight people who are sinning. They don't want to do it, but the Devil makes them! He targets people like Reverend Ted. That's how it happened. The Devil got hold of Reverend Ted, and Ted said, 'Get thee behind me, Satan! And put it in, gently'.
Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union-busting, race baiting, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, who cut rich people's taxes in half, had a incurable case of the military-industrial complex, and said Medicare was socialism that would destroy our freedom. Both sides really should stop pretending he was something other than the man most responsible for our decline.
I always wanted to be a comedian, even when I was a little kid. I had a funny father who was in the news business, by the way. He was a radio news guy. So the news was always in my house, and funny was always in my house. It was sort of just baked into the DNA that I would do this for a living, but I can remember being less than 10 years old and dreaming about being a comedian.
What I have against religion is that they start you when you are so defenseless. I mean, I was three when they started pumping this bullshit into my head. I believed in Santa Claus and the Fairy Godmother, of course I believed in a virgin birth, and a guy lived in a whale, and a woman came from a rib. But then something happened that made me doubt all of it: I graduated sixth grade!
Naturally the smart thing to do to solve your economic woes is to demonize the Democrats. And of course, Sarah Palin is more than happy to oblige. She's been saying that Obama hangs out with terrorists. And you know, I think the evangelical lady who's in a video getting blessed by a witch doctor, who's married to a secessionist, and can't name a newspaper -- she's right, Obama is scary.
I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing: while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them, and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts. And what's more, you would've hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris and thought the Bible was mostly bulls**t.
The comedy gods are smiling on me tonight, because I have been saying, for the longest time, that president Bush must set a timetable for removing his head from his ass...and, by god, today they went in and looked for it... They didn't find it. So now we don't know where it is, but at least for once in my life, I get to see the words "Bush", "operation", and "success" in the same sentence.
There's more attention paid to entertainers than ever and less that they have to say. Not that entertainers were ever a great beacon of knowledge to begin with, but at least when the Beatles were the leaders of the culture, they had a message. It was brief; it wasn't terribly complicated. "Give Peace a Chance." "All You Need is Love." But at least they were trying. At least they had grown.
New Rule: Food companies must face the facts: One container equals one serving. Look, we’re Americans, and that means once we open the bag, there’s no stopping us until we’re licking stray bits of powdered cheese off the carpet. So stop trying to give us nutritional information based on a fraction of the package. It assumes a talent for two things that we’re really not capable of: restraint and math.
My generation didn`t face the kind of urgent, pressing issues that my parents did, who fought through a war and a Depression and know what suffering is. That`s why Bob Dole had a tough time with this electorate. He was an old-fashioned curmudgeon who knew about sacrifice, and we didn`t know if we could live up to his standards. But we knew we could live up to Bill Clinton`s. He`s more like one of us.
The Founding Fathers were more deists. If you had to categorize them as anything. There was some sort of moving prime force. But it's an impersonal force. Some people call it Nature. Certainly not this personal god who you have a personal relationship with, who listens to your prayers and answers them, or doesn't. You know, not the silly stuff that most Americans believe because we're such a dumb nation.
If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
...what I love about Ann Coulter is that she's sort of the-she's sort of a version of myself in that she absolutely never pulls a punch. Even when she's saying something that I think is outrageous, it's what she really believes and she doesn't back off of it. And that is what I find so refreshing and, unfortunately, so unique. I can't name five other people who do that, who don't calculate before they speak.
It's a good time to say "Oh" and take stock and say, "Gee, how was I ethically this year?" That's the problem with faith, Joe. What it does is it kind of screws up your priorities. Your priorities shouldn't be saving your own ass, which is the focus of Christianity. The focus should be, I'm a good person, and I do that just for the sake of being good. Like the Christmas song says, "Be good for goodness' sake."
I was brought up Catholic and we show my mom, my mother, my sister and then I take pains to explain on camera, that there were years after that where I wasn't really religious. I certainly wasn't a Catholic anymore, but I still lived with some mythical man in my head. I didn't really put a name to a face, but I just knew that if I was in trouble or scared I would go, 'Oh God, please help me get out of this one.'
New Rule: If you can force a woman to look at a sonogram—to see what will happen if she has an abortion—you also have to let her see a crying baby, a bratty five-year-old, and a surly teenager to see what will happen if she doesn’t. And you have to tell her it costs $204,000 to raise it until it turns eighteen, in 2028, where it will be a slave to the Chinese, in a radioactive world with no animals, fish, or plants.
I know a whole generation has been raised on the notion of multiculturalism; that all civilizations are just different. No! Not always. Sometimes things are better! Rule of law is better than autocracy and theocracy; equality of the sexes, better; protection of minorities, better; free speech, better; free elections, better; free appliances with large purchases, better! Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance.
When I hear from people that religion doesn't hurt anything, I say really? Well besides wars, the crusades, the inquisitions, 9-11, ethnic cleansing, the suppression of women, the suppression of homosexuals, fatwas, honor killings, suicide bombings, arranged marriages to minors, human sacrifice, burning witches, and systematic sex with children, I have a few little quibbles. And I forgot blowing up girl schools in Afghanistan.
I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can't be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head.
You're either a rationalist, or you're not. And the good news is a recent poll found 20% of adults under 30 say they are rationalists, and have figured out that Santa Claus and Jesus are really the same guy. Now, 20% is hardly a majority. But it's a bigger minority than blacks, jews, homosexuals, NRA members, teachers, or seniors... and it's certainly enough to stop being shy about expressing the opinion that we're not the crazy ones!
Now that they've finished reading the Constitution out loud, the Teabaggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I'm talking of course about the Founding Fathers, who the Teabaggers believe are just like them, but aren't. One is a group of exclusively white men who live in a bygone century, have bad teeth, and think of blacks as 3/5 of a person, and the other are the Founding Fathers.
I always say people would rather be nice than right. I like to be nice too, but come on. People frequently ask me, what is my definition of politically correct. My answer is always the same: the elevation of sensitivity over truth. People would rather be nice than right, rather be sensitive than true. Well, being nice and sensitive are important, but they're not more important than being right; they're not more important than the truth.
Well, the American public always wanted to vote for a guy and Bush was the perfect guy who they'd want to have over for pot-roast. And George Bush is that guy. He does that well. You'd like to have him over for pot-roast. He reminds you of yourself. Okay. Well, now he's been over, he's had the pot-roast. But he's getting drunk and now he's talking about stem cells and Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And now he's the guest that won't leave.
Republicans don't have to accept evolution, economics, climatology, or human sexuality, but I just watched a week of their national convention, and I need them to admit the historical existence of George W. Bush. If your party can run the nation for eight years and then have a national convention and not invite Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, or Tom DeLay, you're not a political movement, you're the witness protection program.
Karl Rove described Obama as "the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini, and making snide comments about everyone who passes by." Unlike George Bush, who's the guy at the country club who makes snide comments, and then passes out. Now this characterization, of course, was something Mr. Rove just completely pulled out of his bulbous, gelatinous a$$, but remember this is America, a land where people believe anything they hear.
When I do stand-up around the country, I often see people walk out. This is a show that they've purposely gone to, where my name is on the ticket, and it cost them $75 or something. So, you think, Wow, that means that they either didn't know very much about me when they bought their tickets or they're that offended by what I've said. I've been doing this a long time. Anybody who comes to one of my shows must sort of have an idea of where I'm coming from.
We learned this week that Mitt Romney is building a car elevator in his house. An elevator for your cars. I get the feeling this guy wants to be president so he has a place to live while he's remodeling his beach house. ... I'm not worried that this guy is out of touch. I'm worried he's Batman. I could see Mitt as Batman. He hears about a robbery, he changes into the magic underwear, he rushes to the crime scene, and he helps the crooks manage their new money.
It takes the youth, really; they're the ones that should have the energy, it shouldn't be the old geezers, but the signs are very worrying. Half of them, apparently, don't believe in global warming. They think it's a hoax, which is more of that stupid, stick-their-head-in-the-sand attitude. Where is the outrage at the generations that have preceded them spending all the money? But the cynicism is so deep and so ingrained; I guess no one feels they can do anything.
I want to just take a moment to thank the Teabaggers. Thank you so much for helping us pass health care, for resurrecting the Obama presidency. I know they're saying, 'Why are you thanking me? I was so against it, I marched on Washington with tea bags hanging off my Founding Fathers costume, with a gun on my hip and a picture of Obama dressed as Hitler, screaming about his birth certificate.' And America saw that and said, 'I think I'll go with the calm black man.'
People do not want to be disillusioned by the new president [Barak Obama]. The liberals felt, finally, this is our time. Now they're worried. Now what they see is more business as usual. We all want to give him the benefit of the doubt, we know it's a tough job and he inherited a mess, but at the end of the day, is it really change we can believe in when there's no public options and Wall Street reform has no teeth in it? It really looks a lot like we just changed the color.
Politicians will promise some pretty ridiculous things. They will promise a chicken in every pot. They'll promise that they'll keep Social Security solvent. They'll promise drugs for old people. They'll promise lots of stuff. But it doesn't come near the kind of promises that religion makes. The Mormons promise that if you're good while you're on Earth, you get to rule over your own planet in the afterlife. Now, there's an entitlement that goes a little bit beyond prescription drugs for old people.
People, especially the liberals, just live in this world where if anything is said that offends anybody even a little bit, not only does that person have to apologize; sometimes they have to go away forever. Go away, bad person. My analysis of this is that most of us don't do anything decent in our life. I'm not saying we're evil. I'm just saying we don't make a contribution, so the way they [liberals] think they're making a contribution is to point at the bad people [which] is somehow even more pathetic.
There is a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy. Of course the Democrats are disappointing. That's what makes them Democrats. If they were any more frustrating they'd be your relatives. But in this country they are all that stands between you and darkest night. You know why their symbol is the letter 'D'? Because it's a grade that means good enough, but just barely. You know why the Republican symbol is 'R'? Because it's the noise a pirate makes when he robs you and feeds you to a shark.
NEW RULE: 'Kidiots' Leave the children behind. At least until they learn something. A new study has shown that half of American high schools agree that newspapers should only be able to publish government-approved material. Almost one out of five said people should not be allowed to voice unpopular opinions..This is the first generation after September 11th, who discovered news during a 'watch what you say' administration...George W. Bush once asked, 'is our children learning.' No, they isn't. A better question would be, 'is our teacher's teaching?
Over the last 30 odd years, Democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into the mental hospital. So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby... That's the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers and civil war re-enactors who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans and who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist? He's not even a liberal.
Americans are finally coming to a point where they're accepting of religious criticism, is because George Bush is the first president who really put religion so front-and-center. He's the most Christ-y president we've ever had - and he is, not uncoincidentally, the biggest disaster we've ever had. I think even people who are religious don't like it shoved down their throat. I think people kind of get it on a certain level, that this is an antiscience administration, and we're living in a time where we can't afford to be antiscience - for environmental reasons, for educational reasons.
Sarah Palin has already had an effect on foreign relations... The new president of Pakistan, Ali Zardari, is in hot water, because last week, Sarah was on a class trip to New York, where she met foreign leaders... And one of the leaders she met was Zardari, and he was gushing over her. He said, oh, you're more gorgeous in person than you are on TV. And so the people in his home country of Pakistan, the Islamists, they issued a fatwa on him, for being too 'flirty.' And when Sarah today was told that Zardari had gotten a fatwa because of her, she said, 'I know, I felt it when he hugged me.'