Mort Sahl

“One reason to keep going is that the country was given to us as a sacred charge. It is, as Stephen Vincent Benet says in 'the Devil and Daniel Webster,' not the only place that created free man- but... Read More its a place that demands that we decide what to do with out freedom. You can only punish yourself, That's the existential view. I don't think there's any reward beyond participating, beyond being here. And the antithesis of reward is punishment, and the only punishment that can come is self-inflicted. I remain optimistic. Whether or not the optimism is justified, I don't know. I want to stay around for the third act.”

“I don't think crucifixion is the answer. I believe in the resurrection. I like that part of the story.”

“I don't believe in good people and bad people. I believe in the better parts of people.”

“We all know that America is the worst country in the world, except for all the others.”

“This matter of two sides to every question is bad logic and bad practice: sometimes there are no sides; sometimes there are a hundred.”

“You know what I want you to do? I want you to blow out the candle and curse the darkness.”

“That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters.”

“I don't think fascism is dying for.”

“The distance between taking social action and having the knowledge is as wide as the mouth of the Mississippi.”

“We claim we believe in compassion, which is an abstract, and when it's personified we discredit the man”

“I found people looked better when they laughed”

“People tell me there are a lot of guys like me, which doesn't explain why I'm lonely.”

“A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.”

“Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.”

“Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.”

“You haven't lived until you've died in California”

“The bravest thing that men do is love women.”

“The beat generation is a coffeehouse full of people expectantly looking at their watches waiting for the beat generation to come on. *1958”

“Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.”

“If someone were to ask me for a short cut to sensuality, I would suggest he go shopping for a used 427 Shelby-Cobra. But it is only fair to warn you that of the 300 guys who switched to them in 1966, only two went back to women.”

“My life needs editing. ”

“Mort Sahl, while attending a preview of Otto Preminger's film Exodus, stood up and called out, "Otto, let my people go!”

“I took a course at Cal once called Statistical Analysis. And there was a guy in the course who used to make up all of his computations and he never used Sigma. He used his own initials. 'Cause he was the standard deviation.”