Lenny Bruce Quotes

The American Constitution was not written to protect criminals; it was written to protect the government from becoming criminals.

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.

There's a lot of money in wars, except in the war on poverty. Can't make any bread helping the poor.

Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people!

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.

It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.

Guys are like dogs. They keep comin' back. Ladies are like cats. Yell at a cat one time, they're gone.

Darwin's theory is as dead as he is. Everyone is surviving, fit or not. Years ago, any kid dumb enough to chase a shiny object down a well was dead, and out of the gene pool. Now they got the technology and medicine to save the fool so he can breed more open mouth breathers.

I think it's about time we gave up religion and got back to God.

You can't do anything with anybody's body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person - you can do only one thing to make it dirty: kill it. Hiroshima was dirty.

Koolaid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish, and, as you know, white bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes - goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are very Jewish - very Jewish cake. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is goyish. Lime soda is very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that Jews won't go near them.

Freedom of speech is a two way street, man. You have the right to say whatever you want and the Boss has a right to tell the police to arrest you.

There are no dirty words, only dirty minds.

Every group, every system has a set of values and morals and when you get outside those, then the alarms ring. I was politically incorrect to 95% of the country; luckily my 5% had the bread to come see me.

Let me tell you the truth: The truth is what is. And what should be is a fantasy a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago.

To say whatever nonsense comes into your head without any repercussions has got to be a bigger high than heckling a movie screen in a darkened theater.

There are never enough I Love You's.

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.

Anyone who has two shirts when someone has none is not a christian.

The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.

Trying to figure things out was my gig. Without the human condition, there's no struggle, no pain and that means no laughter.

If you're from New York and you're Catholic, you're still Jewish. If you're from Butte Montana and you're Jewish, you're still goyisch. The Air Force is Jewish, the Marine Corps dangerous goyisch. Rye Bread is Jewish, instant potatoes, scary goyisch. Eddie Cantor is goyisch, George Jessel is goyisch-Coleman Hawkins is Jewish.

Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich.

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.

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.

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

That's where the conflict starts. We all want for a wife a combination Sunday school teacher and a $500-a-night hooker.

Alright, let's admit it, we Jews killed Christ - but it was only for three days.

Sex and obscenity are not synonymous.

If something about the human body disgusts you, the fault lies with the manufacturer.

Once you take away the struggle for food, clothing and shelter, work is the one four letter word that offends everyone.

What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.

The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is what should be. Now, if you're taught to live up to a what should be that never existed - only an occult superstition, no proof of this should be - then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!

Never trust a preacher with more than two suits.

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.

If there was absolute freedom, people would run over babies and charge admission.

I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write songs like, "What I'm going to do if I grow up".

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 goin' to do.

Every tribe needs a good front man to sell the program. Who better to convince the Middle East to give up the oil, than a brown man with a Muslim name?

I was surprised when Nixon passed the test and showed up in heaven, but, I guess Hitler threw off the curve for our century.

My mother-in-law broke up my marriage. My wife came home from work one day and found me in bed with her.

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

Once the country was settled and built, the bosses changed the order from a stack of educated workers to a barrel of minimum wage lottery dreamers.

You know there's no crooked politicians. There's never a lie because there is never any truth.

My only challenge was to tell my truth, man... figure out what I had to say. These days, it's not enough to boost that roomful of strangers. The young comic spends all their time trying to sound different from the million other jokesters grabbing for the mic.

If I just stuck to pot I might have found out what a drag being an aging hipster actually was.

Part of the kick of making people laugh was doing something different. We were a rare breed - spotting one of us was like pinning a space alien, or abdominal snowman. There were maybe a hundred stand-ups in the whole country when I was doing it.

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?

If you're going to stop masturbating, you can't taper off. You've got to quit, cold jerky!