Stand Up Comedian Quotes

Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breaths away.

A crumb is a great thing: If you break a crumb in half, you don't get two half-crumbs, you get two crumbs. Doesn't that violate some law of physics?

Conservatives want live babies so they can train them to be dead soldiers.

Sudden total weight loss.

One of the effects it [cocaine] had on my personality - my moods, my behaviors - was that it inhibited me a lot. It kind of took possibilities out of my world, and made the focus of things very narrow.

You can't fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up.

There is a core of loneliness. It's partly existential. Secondly, I was raised a loner. My parents were not there. My father was asked to leave because he couldn't metabolize ethanol. Actually, my mother ran away with us when I was 2 months old and my brother was 5. Real dramatic stuff: down the fire escape, through backyards. So, I sort of raised myself. I was alone a lot and I invented myself - I lived through the radio and through my imagination.

Every person you look at, you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking

Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.

I believe you can joke about anything.

Age is a hell of a price to pay for wisdom.

I use the word 'fat'. I use that word because that's what people are: they're fat. They're not bulky; they're not large, chunky, hefty or plump. And they're not big-boned. Dinosaurs were big-boned. These people are not overweight: this term somehow implies there is some correct weight... There is no correct weight. Heavy is also a misleading term. An aircraft carrier is heavy; it's not fat. Only people are fat, and that's what fat people are! They're fat !

Bowling is not a sport because you have to rent the shoes.

There will be a rain dance Friday night, weather permitting!

... the important thing is to, first of all, question everything you read or hear or see or are told. Question it, and try to see the world for what it actually is, as opposed to what someone or some company or some organization or some government is trying to represent it as, or present it as, however they've mislabeled it or dressed it up or told you.

When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?

O. J. Simpson has already received the ultimate punishment: For the rest of his life he has to associate with golfers.

I was trying to get out of the night clubs and was thinking maybe I'll go to the colleges now; that's where you can speak your mind.

The best thing about living at the water's edge: You only have assholes on three sides of you, and if they come this way you can hear them splash.

Energy experts have announced the development of a new fuel made from human brain tissue. It's called assohol.

Never give up on an idea simply because it is bad and doesn't work.

There are actually people who go out and re-fight these battles. You know what I say? Use real ammunition! You just might raise the intelligence level of the American gene pool!

There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions, and wooooords.

To me, fast food is when a cheetah eats an antelope.

To me, authority is something that a freer spirit, a more independent mind, and a person who can handle the world, doesn't need guidance from.

People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a 'common purpose'. 'Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they're going to visit at 3am. So, I dislike and despise groups of people but I love individuals. Every person you look at; you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking.

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 don't they have waiters in waiting rooms?

The surgeon general warned today that saliva causes stomach cancer. But apparently only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.

One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim.

A cat will blink when struck with a hammer.

Environmentalists changed the word jungle to rain forest, because no one would give them money to save a jungle. Same with swamps and wetlands.

Do you think Sammy Davis ate Junior Mints?

We [americans] are not a freedom-loving people in the beautiful, spiritual sense. We have an inspiring Constitution, but we're a hardhearted people.

Anger is a handy term and words are tricky, as we know. What one man perceives as anger, another person - in my case the deliverer of material - is, "Don't you see it, don't you see how badly you're doing?" It's like shaking a child - which you're not supposed to do.

A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

If drumsticks are for playing drums, you would think that breadsticks would be for playing bread, wouldn't you? "Would you like some breadsticks?" "No, thank you, I don't play bread. I play drums. Perhaps I'll have a drum roll."

Lenny Bruce genius was the unique ability to investigate hypocrisy and expose social inequities in a street rap that was really a form of poetry.

The dividend I get [from my compulsion] is the freedom to be totally disorderly in my dreamworld.

As you swim the river of live, do the breast stroke. It helps to clear the turds from your path.

My grandfather, mother and father were gifted verbally, and my mother passed that along to me. She always made sure I was conscious of language and words.

I don't think drugs are a problem; I think they're a symptom. As long as Americans are empty, spiritually, emotionally, morally empty, they will need things like the drugs they choose to use. Mankind has wanted to change the way it felt from the beginning anyway. In this country there are even more reasons to want to feel different, to want to feel better, because this is such a neon sewer. This is such a degrading culture. It forces you to play Beethoven to your child in the uterus so that he will get into a better school and a better job and make more money so he can take care of you.

The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.

Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever.

What do dogs do on their day off?; Can't lie around – that's their job!

There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad word.' You know bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions.

I don't like the phrase shock value. Surprise is essential in comedy, and if people are shocked by what I consider merely surprising, then that's their shock. But there is no joke without surprise.

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.

The effect of the coke on our relationship [with my wife Brenda] was very sick. Now that it's over, those were actually funny times. Looking for each other's coke, hiding it, finding it, doing some, not telling the other. Then fighting over it.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.

When I'm not actually doing my work, I'm planning it or thinking about it or reading things that on some level are transformed into performance fantasies. I have no active interests. I never go anywhere or do anything that transports me outside the boundaries of my mind.

I'm offering a special prize for the first Buick on the moon.

If work is so terrific, how come they have to pay you to do it?

If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.

I always have these little internal monologues. You'll get used to them.

The owner of a Florida massage parlor has been arrested by police. "There weren't any serious violations," said the officers, "she just rubbed us the wrong way."

Why do they bother saying "raw sewage"? Do some people actually cook that stuff?

On the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way.