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Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition.
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.
It would be nice if everybody were a little bit more mindful of what kind of product you're putting out there. Nothing's for everybody. People are liked and disliked, but at least be mindful of what you're doing and what your message is, and trying to stay true to your authenticity and what you're trying to attain or what your goals are, and don't let anybody get in the way of that. At the same time, have a goal, and have a message.
In the "Absolutely Fabulous" show, it's a fairly dysfunctional family, but they're not women who are constantly in search of a man. They don't live conventionally, they don't live in a conventional heterosexual relationship. Edina wishes all her children were gay, because as far as she's concerned it's the most glamorous most interesting thing to be. I think it's about bucking convention, really, and living life without apologizing.
I, for one, can't wait for this election to be over, because the curse of Donald Trump in a satirical comedy way is that, one, he's such a large character; it's hard to satirize at times. Two, he's sucking all the air out of every room he walks into so every attempt leads to covering only him. You can't turn a corner in New York City without people talking about Donald Trump, without talking about the same things about Donald Trump.
If anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single spiritual person who has been able to show either empirically or logically the existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their moral choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife, I will give you my piano, one of my legs and my wife.
There are no winners in this election [2016]. I paid attention to it for about two months and then it just started to depress me. At least Hillary's [Clinton] a politician, but the fact that you've got a guy from a reality TV show! I have to say, out of everything I've ever watched in sports - the greatest comebacks ever - watching [Donald Trump] get the nomination for the Republican Party is the most astounding thing I've ever seen.
When you're 17 years old, you have no idea who you are as a person, so there's no way you can be a good performer. You can't be a good comedian, because you don't know who you are, you don't know what you're saying. Stand-up is nothing but an expression of self-awareness. It wasn't until I was 23, 24 that I got to have a handle on a perspective on life, where I became decent. And I was just a terribly socially awkward younger person.
I had run away from home three times. I had been kicked out of three different schools under different circumstances. I was kicked out of everything that I didn't quit. Kicked out of schools. Kicked out of summer camp, the Boy Scouts, the altar boys, the choir, and something else that I can't think of, that I'm proud of. Anyway, that was my pattern. I just began to invent myself early in life, and went out and did something about it.
I'm not an angry person, just very disappointed and contemptuous of my fellow humans' choices - and on stage those feelings sometimes are exaggerated for a theatric stage - you're on a stage you have an audience of 2500 or 3000 people: you need to project the feelings, the emotions it's heightened, and people mistake it for a personal anger but it's more dissatisfaction, disappointment and contempt for these things we've settled for.
I love individuals. I think people are terrific as I meet and get to know them. I like imagination. I like the freedom that this society manages to parcel out to us in the midst of the rest of what they do to you. I also like thinking about the fact that the atoms in me are the same atoms that are in all the rest of the universe, and that every one of those atoms came from the middle of a star. In other words, it's only me out there.
If 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.
The CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, married one of the Enron secretaries this week. It's amazing how romantic these Enron guys can be when they realize that wives can't be forced to testify against their husbands. Skilling said today she was the best secretary Enron had ever had. She could shred 950 words a minute. ... I guess they are on their honeymoon right now. That's going pretty well. Hey, he's used to screwing Enron employees.
I used to like people more, but now I have children and that changes your life in a lot of ways. Like you spend time with people you never would have chosen to spend time with, not in a million years. I spend whole days with people, I'm like, "I never would have hung out with you. I didn't choose you. Our children chose each other based on no criteria by the way. They're the same size. They don't care who they make me hang out with."
People associate long hair with drug use. I wish people associated long hair with something other than drug use, like an extreme longing for cake. And then strangers would see a long haired guy and say, "That guy eats cake!" "He is on bundt cake!" Mothers saying to their daughters, "Don't bring the cake eater over here anymore. He smells like flour. Did you see how excited he got when he found out your birthday was fast approaching?"
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!
I saw a guy wearing a "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelet and a Lance Armstrong bracelet, and he went up to this blind kid and rubbed his eyes, and the kid could see. But he wasn't used to the light, 'cause it was bright, and he walked into traffic and was killed instantly. Okay, the people that are laughing right now? I'm gonna call you guys half-full. Because you're focusing on the important part of the story: the bracelets are working.
I get a message from Stephen Falk saying, "Hey, if I wrote a part for you in You're The Worst, would you do it?" I was like, "Yes!" And then, of course, later I found out it's going to be me playing myself sort of Larry Sanders-style where I'm the total opposite of what people would expect me to be. I was just like, "Okay, what the hell." But it's really funny to portray me as somebody who is pretending to be a stoner just to succeed.
I LOVE WAL-MART. I CONSIDER MY JOKES TO BE VERY JEUVINILLE. STUFF A 14 YEAR OLD WOULD LAUGH AT BECAUSE THATS THE SENCE OF HUMOR I HAVE. ALL THE STUFF I TALK ABOUT MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR CHURCH GROUPS HOWEVER WAL-MART AINT SUNDAY SCHOOL. AS LONG AS I DIDNT USE OFFENSIVE FOUL LANGUAGE I KNEW ID BE FINE. WAL-MART GETS IT, THATS WHY THEY BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION. BESIDES ITS THERE STORE THEY CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT. THATS AMERICA BABY!
Working in TV and navigating success is a tricky thing. It's easier to navigate the hard work of starting out because you just do anything they let you do, but once you get into an orbit, after the thrusters have pushed you into the orbit, now you have to navigate that orbit. There's no choices when you're starting out. You're just like, "Please, let me do anything." But then it turns around and it's like, "We'll let you do anything".
The president is on national TV apologizing for getting oral sex. Why didn't he just stick with his lie? You got to stick with your lie. If you lie, you have to believe that lie whole-heartedly. It has to become the truth for you. But this man, the most powerful man in the world, is on national TV apologizing for receiving oral sex. He's an idiot. There are men sitting in here right now who would gladly accept oral sex on national TV.
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.
God doesn't seem to talk to people like he used to. Who's he talking to now? I don't know. Then I'm walking down the street in Manhattan one day, and I realize maybe it's those guys you see walking down the street talking to themselves. You know, those guys that are like, 'I can't! No, I can't!' Maybe the other side of that conversation is God going, 'You're the new leader.' 'No I can't!' They're not crazy - they're reluctant prophets.
I was pretty young. I guess I was in high school, so I was probably 13 years old. It was crazy. I remember it very vividly. I remember - it was actually kind of horrifying, because one of my friends - we smoked out of a bong, and one of my friends - this was so stupid - he didn't want to bring - it was after school on a Friday, and he didn't - we smoked weed in this park called the Ravine that was across the street from my high school.
Our own economy tells us to take as much as we can get, right? Our own economy says, you're going to be the most successful graduate if you go into the business world and take as much you can get. That's not how nature works. Nature has a much simpler economy. Everything in nature takes what it needs. That's it. You don't see an oak tree gathering up all the resources. An oak tree takes what it needs to be the authentic oak tree it is.
I could've enjoyed a cigarette if I smoked back before everyone knew it was bad - say, like, 1923. Everybody smoked back then. There was no medical information against it; they had no idea - it was a paradise. It was a smoker's paradise: 'They're taking my lung out next week. I don't know why. Doctor thinks maybe I'm brushing my teeth too often, but I can't help it because, for some reason, my breath smells like I licked a monkey's ass.
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.
Once I got into high school, any time I had to do a talk or a speech, I just loved being up in front of an audience, it was always a character. And then I discovered that an impersonation of the teacher was a really, really good way to get a laugh, and it would also get you good marks, because the teachers were always bored and loved to be the "teacher-parody." So that became my little trick at school, and I became known for doing that.
It's really nice to see that, looking at all sides of the abortion issue - from the person who doesn't want to have kids so they're going to have an abortion and that's not traumatic for them, to somebody who loses a wanted pregnancy, to somebody who has complicated feelings because of their religion. We can talk about all of those complicated and individual stories and not feel like there's any one abortion story that's right or wrong.
Comedy Central wanted to do a show with me, I had a couple failures under my belt with them already, but they still wanted to try something else. They came to me and said they wanted to do something that was internet focused and created original content on their site, so they could compete with the funny or dies and what not. So that was the premise, and they gave us a small amount of money, $5000, and from there it turned into the show.
I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't... Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe...same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.
A dog will stay stupid. That's why we love them so much. The entire time we know them, they're idiots. Think of your dog. Every time you come home, he thinks it's amazing. He has no idea how you accomplish this every day. You walk in the door; the joy of this experience overwhelms him. He looks at you, He's back. It's that guy, that same guy. He can't believe it. Everything is amazing to your dog. Another can of food? I don't believe it.
I don't really know. I think the first test is when you're very little and you fart, and you laugh at it and so do your friends and family. I knew before I was funny I was very annoying so I have that covered. I think it was because I was not very good in school I used humor as a defense mechanism. When I started doing plays and stuff at school I decided that I was going to keep doing it until someone tells me to stop and get a real job.
It's assumed that if you're a woman, you want to be the prettiest version of yourself. It always put me in a bad mood. It was like, "OK, I'm successful. I'm supposed to be happy. Well, why aren't I happy?" Part of the problem was that my looked-at-ness had become a priority over my art making. Over and over again it was like, "I don't have time for this. I want to work." I love writing. I don't love somebody putting false eyelashes on me.
One of the nice things about looking at a bear is that you know it spends 100 per cent of every minute of every day being a bear. It doesn't strive to become a better bear. It doesn't go to sleep thinking, "I wasn't really a very good bear today". They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment
There's no razor in candy. If for no other reason, it doesn't make financial sense. It's not fiscally prudent. How much does a piece of candy cost - like, a penny and a half? An apple's like 15 cents? Anybody here bought a Mach 3 replacement cartridge recently? They're so expensive, they don't even keep them on the shelf. You know, you have to ask the people behind the counter. I feel like I'm trying to buy enriched plutonium or something.
I think the part of media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent. When you look at the majority of shows on television they placate that kind of behavior. If you go through a weekly Monday through Friday, it's all there. It's in how people on the sitcoms and cop shows talk to each other.
God, she's growing up, and I don't know when it happened, man. I used to buy her Minnie Mouse panties and little Winnie the Pooh underwear. I was helping my wife fold cloths. I picked up a pair of skimpy underwear. I looked at my wife and said: "When you gonna wear these for me?" She goes, "I can't. They're your daughter's." "Aaaaaaahhhhhh! No, No, No!" There was nothing to them! The how-to-wash tag was the biggest piece of cloth on there.
Absolutely I'm going to be talking about it, because it's in the zeitgeist and it's happening. It's an election year. It's the biggest election. Every election is a big election, so whenever anybody says that it kinds of grates me, but it's a fiasco. It's turned into a complete circus act, so of course you have to make fun of it, but responsible journalists definitely are being irresponsible. They're giving [Donald Trump] so much air time.
I'm in a new club, by the way. And I don't know if you're first timers like I am, but I'm in the 'I Just Dropped My Cell Phone In My Own Piss' Club. Have you done that? Yeah, good times. I'm on the phone and I forget that I'm using shoulder technique. Urinals were taken so I went in to use the regular john. And as I'm standing there, mid-conversation, I'm like 'Are you serious?' and it just started to toboggan right down my powerful chest.
To this day, to this very day, except for television, I've never had a writer. Anything I've ever done on the stage, happened on the stage and I developed it from there. It started doing impressions and jokes - which I did very poorly. To this day I can't tell a joke. That sounds nuts, but it's true. I exaggerate it and it becomes a joke. Everything I've ever done I've done out on the stage and it became a performance over many many years.
The other day my twelve-year-old says to me, I don't feel like I'm with you right now. You're in the car with me, you're checking your e-mail, you're not listening to me, I don't feel like I'm with you. And I say, You know what? That was your mother's gripe, too. And she was right. And you're also correct. When you cop to something, you get to the next level. In this case, the next level is: I just learned something from my twelve-year-old.
Every year on my birthday I get a small dash on my inner thigh where my balls currently hang. You can't tell me that's not going to be a beautiful work of art when it's finished. My grandkids are playing with my balls, they can't figure it out. They're like, 'What are these things?' I'm like, 'It's your future, read the chart.' They don't stop growing; they're like earlobes. That joke was inspired by a door that wasn't locked when I was 11.
Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. "Harpo my boy," he said, "I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember." My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. "Yes sir?" I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were.
Former Vice President Al Gore starring in a new documentary about global warming. I believe it's called [Leno snores]. ... The film actually features Al Gore and explores his journey on how he first got interested in temperature change. It started back when he was vice president. He noticed how the temperature would change, like whenever Bill would walk into the room, it would get warm and whenever Hillary walked into the room, it got cold.
With me being in so many pain from when you have a betrayal from your best friend - who was my husband - and the girl got pregnant, I couldn't even get out of bed. The only thing that saved me was my stand-up. I would get on stage and just talk about stuff, and I made people laugh. A lot of women e-mail me and say, 'How do you smile? How do you laugh at something like this?' That's how I do it. I laugh because that's how I get through pain.
Men aren't allowed to have self-esteem, because we're already supposed to have all the power.... But most men earn less than they want, barely the minimum wage. They're drones. They do stuff they don't want to do to support their families, and they're not sure why they do it. They don't know what they're doing half the time, and any time we stick up for ourselves, we're pigs because we don't know how to articulate our frustrations and joys.
There's not too many people that don't think I'm crazy, for walking away from so much money. I'm at a restaurant with my wife, it's a nice restaurant, we're eating dinner. I look across the room, I say, 'You see this guy over here, across the room? He has $100 million.' And we're eating the same entree. So, OK, fine, I don't have $50 million or whatever it was, but say I have $10 million in the bank. The difference in lifestyle is miniscule.
I'm not big on fat jokes. That's a little beneath me. I'm not a huge fan of making a joke completely at someone else's expense. Even though I think he does it better than anyone else, I don't love... Well, it's different with Sacha Baron Cohen, but that whole thing where you're "punking" people? I don't like that. I don't like doing it, and I don't particularly find it funny when the joke is on a person who doesn't know they're being set up.
I find that a duck's opinion of me is influenced by whether or not I have bread. A duck loves bread, but he does not have the capability to buy a loaf. That's the biggest joke on the duck ever. If I worked at a convenience store, and a duck came in and stole a loaf of bread, I would let him go. I'd say, "Come back tomorrow, bring your friends!" When I think of a duck's friends, I think of other ducks. But he could have, say, a beaver in tow.