Quote

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.

George Carlin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Carlin
Age: 71 †
Born: 1937
Born: May 12
Died: 2008
Died: June 22
Actor
Comedian
Composer
Film Actor
Film Producer
Humorist
Journalist
Manufacturer
Radio Personality
Screenwriter
Stand-Up Comedian
New York City
New York
George Denis Patrick Carlin
Phrases
Merely
Joke
Value
Comedy
Shock
Values
Essential
Without
Essentials
Phrase
Like
Surprise
Shocked
People
Jokes
Surprising
Consider

More quotes by George Carlin

Image
All the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes people just want to feel different. And so long as Third World peasants are poor they will send us drugs, and as long as we are empty we will ask for this little plant.
George Carlin
Image
If God didn't want you to masturbate, he would have given you short arms.
George Carlin
Image
I can remember staring at the orphanage and feeling envy.
George Carlin
Image
Life is a series of dogs.
George Carlin
Image
I definitely have a gift for language that is rhythmic and attractive to the ear, and I have interesting [verbal] imagery which I guess is a poetic touch.
George Carlin
Image
The women who line up at a comic's dressing-room door are not what you'd call your class groupies.
George Carlin
Image
Test of Metal: Will of Iron, Nerves of Steel, Heart of Gold, Balls of Brass.
George Carlin
Image
The mayfly lives only one day. And sometimes it rains.
George Carlin
Image
When you think about it, 12:15 P.M. is actually 11:75 A.M.
George Carlin
Image
If God is all powerful, can He make a stone so big that He Himself can't lift it?
George Carlin
Image
Being a Dodgers fan led to my first Air Force court-martial, but that's another story.
George Carlin
Image
Property is theft. Nobody owns anything. When you die, it all stays here.
George Carlin
Image
And now gay people want to get married... Haven't they suffered enough?
George Carlin
Image
Here's a phrase that apparently the airlines simply made up: near miss. They say that if 2 planes almost collide, it's a near miss. Bullshit, my friend. It's a near hit! A collision is a near miss. [WHAM! CRUNCH!] Look, they nearly missed! Yes, but not quite.
George Carlin
Image
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.
George Carlin
Image
No one who has had Taps played for them has ever been able to hear it.
George Carlin
Image
The Human Species could have been great but instead we became satisfied with lights on our tennis shoes.
George Carlin
Image
When someone is impatient and says, 'I haven't got all day,' I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?
George Carlin
Image
They [the Reagan Administration] want to put street criminals in jail to make life safer for the business criminals. They're against street crime, providing that street isn't Wall Street.
George Carlin
Image
Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
George Carlin