George Carlin photo

George Carlin

George Denis Patrick Carlin was a Grammy-winning American stand-up comedian, actor, author and philosopher.

Carlin was especially noted for his political and black humor and his observations on language, psychology, and religion along with many 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 narrow 5-4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's right to regulate Carlin's act on the public airwaves.

Carlin's mid-2000s stand-up routines focused on the flaws in modern-day America. He often took on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture.

A disciple of Lenny Bruce, he placed second on the Comedy Central cable television network list of the 10 greatest stand-up comedians, ahead of Bruce and behind Richard Pryor. He was a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the three-decade Johnny Carson era, and was also the first person to host Saturday Night Live.


“Do you know why hurricanes have names instead of numbers? To keep the killing personal. No one cares about a bunch of people killed by a number. '200 Dead as Number Three Slams Ashore' is not nearly as interesting a headline as 'Charlie kills 200.' Death is much more satisfying and entertaining if you personalize it.Me, I'm still waitin' for Hurricane Ed. Old Ed wouldn't hurt ya, would he? Sounds kinda friendly. 'Hell no, we ain't evacuatin'. Ed's comin'!”
George Carlin
Read more
“It is said that Indians were sometimes named for the first thing they saw when they were born. Makes you wonder why there aren't more Indians named Hairy Pussy, doesn't it?”
George Carlin
Read more
“If you guys want to get a MOM tattoo and save a little money, just get two letters done. Get about a one-inch capital M tattooed on each cheek of your ass in pink and brown ink. Then when you bend over, it says "Mom." Also, later on if you're havin' sex with your girlfriend, and her parents are in the next room, when you finish up you can just lie on your back, draw your legs up to your chest and silently say, 'Wow!”
George Carlin
Read more
“It's not in the mainstream media yet, but the biggest jump in skin cancer has occurred since the advent of sunscreens. That kind of thing makes me happy. The fact that people, in pursuit of a superficial look of health, give themselves a fatal disease. I love it when 'reasoning' human beings think they have figured out how to beat something and it comes right back and kicks them in the nuts. God bless the law of unintended consequences. And the irony is impressive: Healthy people, trying to look healthier, make themselves sick. Good!”
George Carlin
Read more
“There are women named Faith, Hope, Joy, and Prudence. Why not Despair, Guilt, Rage, and Grief? It seems only right. 'Tom, I'd like you to meet the girl of my dreams, Tragedy.' These days, Trajedi.”
George Carlin
Read more
“There's also way too much religion in the South to be consistent with good mental health.Still, I love traveling down there, especially when I'm in the mood for a quick trip to the thirteenth century. I'm not someone who buys into all that 'New South' shit you hear; I judge a place by the number of lynchings they've had, overall.”
George Carlin
Read more
“You know what I do? I steal things. Fuck 'em! I grab a handful of candy bars and six magazines and head for the gate.”
George Carlin
Read more
“California is a small woman saying, 'Fuck me.' New York is a large man saying, 'Fuck you!”
George Carlin
Read more
“Of course, in Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That's why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.”
George Carlin
Read more
“I think these pipe-smokers oughta just move to the next level and go ahead and suck a dick. There's nothing wrong with suckin' dicks. Men do it, women do it; can't be all bad if everybody's doin' it. I say, Drop the pipe, and go to the dick! That's my advice. I'm here to help.”
George Carlin
Read more
“The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don't belong; it doesn't include me, and it never has. no matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they 'ought to be.' And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope!”
George Carlin
Read more
“I'm happy to tell you there is very little in this world that I believe in.”
George Carlin
Read more
“hard work is a misleading term. physical effort & long hours do not constitute hard work. hard work is when someone pays you to do something you'd rather not be doing. anytime you'd rather be doing something other than the thing you're doing...you're doing hard work.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Everyone smiles in the same language.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Life is a series of dogs.”
George Carlin
Read more
“I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.”
George Carlin
Read more
“There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions, and wooooords.”
George Carlin
Read more
“I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Sometimes a little brain damage can help.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Catholic, which I was until I reached the age of reason”
George Carlin
Read more
“The older you get, the better you realize you were.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Is there another word for synonym?”
George Carlin
Read more
“If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?”
George Carlin
Read more
“Y'ever notice how you never seem to get laid on Thanksgiving? I think it's because all the coats are on the bed.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Religion has what is EASILY the greatest bullshit story of all time.”
George Carlin
Read more
“The worst thing about e-mail is that you can’t interrupt the other person. You have to read the whole thing and then e-mail them back, pointing out all their mistakes and faulty assumptions. It’s frustrating and it’s time-consuming. God bless phone calls.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Religion is just mind control. ”
George Carlin
Read more
“They say that instead of cursing the darkness, one should light a candle. Nothing is mentioned, though, about cursing a lack of candles.”
George Carlin
Read more
“To my way of thinking, there is every bit as much evidence for theexistence of UFOs as there is for the existence of God. Probably farmore. At least in the case of UFOs there have been countless tapedand filmed and, by the way, unexplained sightings from all over theworld, along with documented radar evidence seen by experiencedmilitary and civilian radar operators.>>”
George Carlin
Read more
“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic… asshole.”
George Carlin
Read more
“What wine goes with Captain Crunch?”
George Carlin
Read more
“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.”
George Carlin
Read more
“If everyone in the world sat quietly at the same time, closed their eyes and concentrated as hard as they could on peace and goodwill, all the killing and cruelty in the world would continue. And probably increase.”
George Carlin
Read more
“The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”
George Carlin
Read more
“How is it possible to have a civil war?”
George Carlin
Read more
“As it stands right now, I lead Richard Pryor in heart attacks, two to one. However, Richard still leads me, one to nothing, in burning yourself up.”
George Carlin
Read more
“How can He be perfect? Everything He ever makes...dies.”
George Carlin
Read more
“What exactly is the free world, anyway? I guess it would depend on what you consider the non-free world. And I can't find a clear definition of that, can you? Where is that? Russia? China? For chrissakes, Russia has a better Mafia than we do now, and China is pirating Lion King DVDs and selling dildos on the Internet. They sound pretty free to me. Here are some more jingoistic variations you need to be on the lookout for; "The greatest nation on Earth; the greatest nation in the history of the world"; and "the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth." That last one is usually thrown in just before we bomb a bunch of brown people. Which is every couple of years.”
George Carlin
Read more
“The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.”
George Carlin
Read more
“People who say they don't care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don't care what people think.”
George Carlin
Read more
“There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.”
George Carlin
Read more
“And now, in the interest of equal time, here is a message from the National Institute of Pancakes: It reads, and I quote, "Fuck waffles.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Забелязвали ли сте, че всеки, който кара по-бавно от вас е идиот, а всеки, който кара по-бързо е маниак?”
George Carlin
Read more
“I'll bet there aren't too many people hooked on crack who can play the bagpipes.”
George Carlin
Read more
“Why do we park on driveways and drive on parkways? Just to be silly!”
George Carlin
Read more
“But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.”
George Carlin
Read more