Lenny Bruce Quotes
1. The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be,’ there is only what is.
2. The only truly anonymous donor is the guy who knocks up your daughter.
3. A lot of people say to me, ‘Why did you kill Christ?’ I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know.
4. Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
5. In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
6. If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone.
7. Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
8. Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.
9. I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I’m going to be if I grow up.
10. If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
11. The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.
12. The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it… try to fake three laughs in an hour – ha ha ha ha ha – they’ll take you away, man. You can’t.
13. The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.
14. I hate small towns because once you’ve seen the cannon in the park there’s nothing else to do.
15. When you’re eight years old nothing is your business.
16. I’ll die young, but it’s like kissing God.
17. When you’re eight years old, nothing is any of your business.
18. The whole motivation for any performer is “Look at me, Ma
19. Never tell. Not if you love your wife… In fact, if your old lady walks in on you, deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and she’ll believe it: “I’m tellin’ ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around her neck ‘Lay on Top of Me Or I’ll Die.’ I didn’t know what I was gonna do….
20. I want to perform an unnatural act.
21. Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from that tribe. That’s what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is – One Who Killed Our Lord. And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.
22. If I get busted in New York, the freest city in the world, that will be the end of my career
23. Catholicism is like Howard Johnson, and what they have are these franchises and they give all these people different franchises in the different countries but they have one government, and when you buy the Howard Johnson franchise you can apply it to the geography – whatever’s cool for that area – and then you, you know, pay the bread to the main office.
24. Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York you’re Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish even if you are Jewish.
25. I wanted out of the navy so bad in ’45, I faked homo to get a discharge. It didn’t matter that the Germans surrendered, I knew we were heading to Japan and I was done with that scene.
26. I’m sure that half the buzz from smoking grass was the fact that it was so illegal.
27. When homosexuals were repressed, you got Tennessee Williams. Today’s tolerance got you Hilton Perez.
28. I was a Jew talking about Goyim religion. If I had just stuck to Moses, everything would have been cool. But, copping to being part of the whole Christ murder conspiracy got everyone goose-stepping again.
29. You can’t just run out and start the car until some cat invents a car.
30. You got to pay your dues to get the joke. Besides, laughter is cheap and very portable. If there’s a pogrom, or they’re blaming you for the plague, nothing is easier to pack than a sense of humor.
31. I’ve talked to biblical cats, and Neanderthals who been here since day one. No one here has even seen the Big Boss. Ever.
32. Children ought to watch pornographic movies: it’s healthier than learning about sex from Hollywood.
33. You put a guy on a desert island, he’ll do it to mud, a chicken, a barrel, anything, a knothole.
34. I’ve been accused of bad taste, and I’ll go down to my grave accused of it and always by the same people, the ones who eat in restaurants that reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.
35. I credit the motion picture industry as the strongest environmental factor in molding the children of my day.
36. There is only what is and that’s it. What should be is a dirty lie.
37. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the people who are lonesome could live in one big dormitory, sleep in beds next to each other, talk, laugh, and keep the lights on as long as they want to?
38. Communism is just one big telephone company.
39. I was surprised when Nixon passed the test and showed up in heaven, but, I guess Hitler threw off the curve for our century.
40. When earth gets good and crowded, like 15th century England, then some new Pilgrims are gonna rocket their Mayflowers to a new solar system.
41. I know what “custody” [of the children] means. “Get even.” That’s all custody means. Get even with your old lady.
42. You got a million drug laws now because the bosses figured there was more money in putting people in jail than taxing something anyone can grow on a window sill.
43. Sex and obscenity are not synonymous.
44. There’s always a down side with any freedom. It’s not just homosexual freedom, but any sexual freedom comes at a price, and that is usually art.
45. You know there’s no crooked politicians. There’s never a lie because there is never any truth.
46. The crooks downtown figured out that comedy is like a hammer. It can put up a barn and it can knock down a wall. So they bought it outright and marketed it as Comedy Central.
47. If you live in New York, even if you’re Catholic, you’re Jewish
48. Once you sleep on feathers you can’t go back to sleeping on the floor.
49. All my humor is based upon destruction and despair.
50. I am influenced by every second of my waking hour.
51. All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.
52. What you end up with is outrageousness without the laugh – comedy as electro shock therapy.
53. Never trust a preacher with more than two suits.
54. I’m not a comedian. I’m Lenny Bruce.
55. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.
56. If I just stuck to pot I might have found out what a drag being an aging hipster actually was.
57. Anyone who has two shirts when someone has none is not a christian.
58. Marijuana is rejected all over the world. Damned. In England heroin is alright for out-patents, but marijuana? They’ll put your ass in jail. I wonder why that is? The only reason could be: To Serve the Devil – Pleasure! Pleasure, which is a dirty word in Christian culture.
59. I would become a priest or a rabbi or a monk or whatever the hell was necessary to perform miracles such as taking money from someone else’s pocket and putting it into mine, still remaining within the confines of the law.
60. Every group needs a comedian. A comic who is politically incorrect at the Berkeley campus might slay them at a Klan rally.
