George Carlin Quotes

You shouldn't go around the world behaving ruthlessly when you don't have to. Sometimes you do have to. There is only so much pie to go around. If you're going to take more than your fair share of pie, as socialists would look at it, then someone else is not getting his. That means you've got to take it away from them.

I guess the Reagan era is defined as the 'I want it all for me, and screw everybody else' era.

There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to suceed and be great. Our thought has been 'Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself,' while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves.

The kind of society which we still have is maybe, in some cases, getting worse. Competition is becoming a virtue. Intense competition drives people to go more and more into self-interest. Even to see other folks as competition.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff

Economic Man faces a merciless world alone and unaided, his hand against every other's.

The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old and some of the young, and some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail.

The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to collectivists, to people who believe that wealth is best obtained by redistribution, and that message is clear and concise . . . Egalitarianism is sinful; it's also cowardly.

Any society which gives lip-service to the idea of equal opportunity is going to generate jealousy of others who are better off than you are, even if the thing that's in short supply can't be carved up and shared without destroying it.

Capitalism places every man in competition with his fellows for a share of the available wealth. A few people accumulate big piles, but most do not. The sense of community falls victim to this struggle.

Consumerist ads brainwash us into individualist and egotistic self-love.

Everything I had been taught to regard as a vice - and I still regard them as vices - under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue: Greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees.

What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith.

That's the trick of free market economic theory: it doesn't just ask you to only be selfish and not care about others. It tells you that by being selfish, you are helping others. And, in fact, by trying to directly help others, you will hurt them.

When you have a limited resource and you have a lot of people wanting that resource, then those who get more justify as to why they got more, and those who get less say they have been treated badly.

We do not want socialism.

Growing up, it was uncool to admit that your family had any money. And then, instantly, money was cool. In Reagan's parlance, it was about freedom of the individual, which was freedom to be greedy... individual versus society. There was a weird seduction in that, which I still feel.

But I do have one real problem with socialism: I like money.

Putting another human being above yourself isn't healthy. I think it's capitalistic.

There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force. But even Capitalist cynicism will admit that however unconscionable we may be when our own interests are affected, we can be most indignantly virtuous at the expense of others.

free market is a market in which groups and individuals are differently represented. Parity in prosperity and performance between differently able individuals and groups can be achieved only by playing socialist leveler.

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, and called it gold: before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud, the mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, and with blind feelings reverence the power that grinds them to the dust of misery.

stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.

Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.