George Carlin Media Quotations

I actually was a writer who had the ability to perform his own work as opposed to a comedian who wrote his own material. So that really made me happy and changed my whole perspective.

I set out to become a comedian, and I said in order to do that the first thing I'll do is become a disc jockey and know my pop music. I like it, my voice is good, and I can start out getting confidence without an audience in front of me.

I became a guy who wanted to be a comedian someday, or a comic actor. The way I put it was, I'll be like Danny Kaye. He was kind of the model I had in mind.

I'm not collegial, I don't hang out. I'm soloist, I like my solitude, I don't really hang around with comedians.

Without the laughs, the audience wouldn't be there at all, so in that sense, yes, I am a comedian.

By elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

Pacifism is a nice idea but it can get you killed. We're not there yet. Evolution is slow, small pox is fast.

I went to the Missing Persons Bureau but no one was there.

I feel sorry for confetti. Its useful life lasts about two seconds. And it can never be used again.

In comic strips, the person on the right always speaks first.

I gravitated toward being a funny guy. I liked the radio comedians. I lived in the Golden Age of radio, and the Golden Age of television came along when I was still in my early teens.

I worry about my judgment when anything I believe in or do regularly begins to be accepted by the American public.

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!

Soft rock music isn’t rock, and it ain’t music. It’s just soft.

Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something, it won't be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up.

All the media and the politicians ever talk about is things that separate us, things that make us different from one another