Bill Maher Quotes

Today, President Obama finally met with BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, but the meeting was only scheduled 20 minutes. Call me crazy, but I think it should take more time to discuss an oil spill than it does to get your oil checked.

There have been more than 30,000 oil wells drilled in the Gulf of Mexico in the last 50 years. This is the first time something like this has ever happened [BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill], and we need to get to the bottom of it, find out what happened, make sure it doesn't happen again. But I think it is very reasonable to continue to drill.

BP found itself in a difficult situation after the tragic events in the Gulf of Mexico. We did everything we could to support it. Britain is interested in this, isn't it? I think it is. The same is true of other areas.

It's really sad down there. Everyone's sitting around asking to help and BP won't let anybody do anything. People are coming down to help. People want to help.

The BP spill was the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. Yet somehow, gas companies like BP and Halliburton ran interference on reporting that story.

What people unfortunately relate to when they think of Alaska oil was when the Exxon Valdez went aground because of a captain that was drunk. But when you look to how we have been safely producing and moving Alaska's oil for decades, it is a track record that is enviable.

There is so much oil now in the Gulf of Mexico, and you can thank the folks of British Petroleum for this, so much oil in the Gulf, you can now park on it.

Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control.

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

When BP was not moving fast enough on claims, we told BP to set aside $20 billion in a fund - managed by an independent third party - to help all those whose lives have been turned upside down by the spill.

The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands.

BP has finally acknowledged what the American people have been saying for weeks: It must take responsibility for its reckless conduct, clean up the Gulf and compensate the countless victims of the disaster it caused.

Other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming. It's about coordination.

When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

One of the problems I have with the administration is that they're not tough enough. They are waiting for BP to say, 'Oh, we've got a new plan to stop the oil leak.' They need to stop it, contain it, clean it up.

It is time to get rid of the harmful and dangerous practice of offshore drilling once and for all.

Here's a little bit of good news. The Coast Guard says that BP is now catching up to 630,000 gallons of oil a day. The bad news is that they're capturing it with ducks.

The notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete.

You folks been following the big British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? I'm telling you, British Petroleum has put more birds in oil than Colonel Sanders.

Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.

During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information.

Bad news, it's going to be a huge environmental disaster, the oil rig down there in the Gulf of Mexico. The good news is they think now that the oil spill will be diluted by the melting ice caps.

BP CEO Tony Hayward said recently, 'No one wants this thing over more than I do. I'd like my life back.' Tony, I'm so sorry you had your summer disrupted. I'd buy you a drink, but you'd probably spill that too and make me clean it up.

I wrote an article about the marine landing [in Haiti] right away, but barely mentioned the oil, because my article would come out two months later and I assumed by then, "of course, everybody knows." Nobody knew. There was a news report in the Wall Street Journal, in the petroleum journals, and in some small newspapers, but not in the mainstream press.