George Carlin Quotes

Corporate America has conceived a Bicentennial plan to manipulate, the mass psychology of an entire nation back into conformity with its vision of what the American life should be The strategy will be to speak of the greatness of America to those who feel insignificant; to speak of patriotic commitment to those who feel isolated and contused. The long range goal is to convince people that the problems facing America can be solved by existing institutions.

Comedy is very disarming. It's a way to talk about things and still be light-hearted. And when it's done really well, you never see the strings, whereas when you watch an infomercial or a politician speaking, a lot of times you can see the strings, you can see what agenda they're trying to push.

America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! it never lets you down!

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me With just a pocketful of soap.

If I lived in another country, like a country that was, say, an enemy of the United States, I would be more amused than I am.

Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.

Some people thought we were presenting Archie as a false character. President Nixon thought we were making a fool out of a good man.

There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.

America is the best half-educated country in the world.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.

Occasionally, the horrors of life in North Korea do show up in our American satire.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

All you have to do is anesthetize the masses by telling them they’re an elite, that they’ve got a mission, that they’re making history, that they’re fulfilling their destiny and fighting for a better world — and they swallow it like lambs — even when a guttersnipe says it.

Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

Ksenia Sobchak as president is like Sergei Shnurov as an artist. It's satire. It's a very high-level art project.

In the arsenal of the phony, the politics of God is one of the deadliest punches to the sweet spot of the American mind.

We buy into all kinds of lies that are sold to us from advertising to Fox news or from the Vatican to Goldman Sachs.

The media, the corporations, the politicians…have all done such a good job of scaring the American public, it’s come to the point where they don’t need to give any reason at all.

A man thinks he is dying for his country," said Anatole France, "but he is dying for a few industrialists." But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist.

Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent-thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the “Nation,” it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry.

America is one long expectoration.

Whenever people in that part of the world asked Patterson about the wonders of America, the possibilities and the hope of America, Patterson would say that it was a good and fine place but all the Americans were running it into the ground and that it would be a far better place if it had no Americans.

They'll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this f**kin' place. It's a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people: white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on.