George Carlin Trying Quotations

I try not to see new comics - their acts or their films. Part of that is professional. I don't want to be influenced. But another part is fear and jealousy. I'm afraid to see how good they might be. I don't like that emotion, but it's part of me.

For a long time, I've distinguished between entertainer and performer and entertainer and artist. To me, an entertainer is someone who pleases others, and an artist tries to please himself.

I just try to find targets I feel something about and express it my way.

No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you're screwed because it's all fixed and rigged. There is a club and you ain't in it.

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.

... 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.

I don't think we really gave barbarism a fair try.

Everyone should try to scratch their name on the bomb of life.

Interesting form of murder we come up with: Assassination. We assassinate people who've told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Apparently we are not ready to live together.

Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body

That's the whole meaning of life, isn't it? Trying to find a place for your stuff.

I use the [vulgar] words because apparently these words do not corrupt morally. I'm from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It's a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It's never to shock. I know where it fits, it's never to shock. There's no shock value left in words.

I think you can talk about anything if the context is correctly arranged. If you set up the context and you bring the audience along carefully enough with you, you can get them to cross the line with you. What I try to do is talk about things that bother me, and I hope that in doing so I bother other people.