Quotes from Lenny Bruce

If I get busted in New York, the freest city in the world, that will be the end of my career.

If you're going to break up with your old lady, and you live in a small town, make sure you don't break up at three in the morning. Because you're screwed; there's nothing to do. So make it about nine in the morning. Bullshit around, worry her a little, then come back at seven in the night.

When you're eight years old, nothing is your business.

I'll die young, but it's like kissing God.

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

Liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.

People should be taught what is, not what should be. All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the breadline.

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

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.

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. We killed him because he didn't want to become a doctor, that's why we killed him.

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.

Take away the right to say "f**" and you take away the right to say "f** the government."

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.

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!

The whole motivation for any performer is 'Look at me, Ma.'

There are never enough 'I love yous'.

There are no dirty words, only dirty minds.

Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.

With overpopulation, human misery, and the threat of war increasing, we need rather more adult performances from society.

I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to someone else.

Now, if anyone in this room or the world finds those two words decadent, obscene, immoral, amoral, asexual, the words 'to come' really make you feel uncomfortable, if you think I'm rank for saying it to you, you the beholder think it's rank for listening to it, you probably can't come. And then you're of no use, because that's the purpose of life, to re-create it.

War spells out my philosophy of "No right or wrong"— just "Your right, my wrong"—everything is subjective.

I guess what happens is, if you get arrested in Town A (Philadelphia) and then Town B (San Francisco)-with a lot of publicity-then when you get to Town C they have to arrest you or what kind of shithouse town are they running? It's a pattern of unintentional harassment.

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