Quotes from Paul Krassner

As long as the government can arbitrarily decide which substances are legal and which are illegal, then those who remain behind bars for illegal substances are political prisoners

English is my second language. Laughter is my first.

Since I was both an atheist and an absurdist, I had decided that the most absurd thing I could do would be to develop an intimate relationship with the God I didn't believe in.

I Used To Believe In Reincarnation, But That Was In a Past Life.

Avoid internalizing society's sexism, racism, ageism - pick an ism, any ism.

People don't like to be lectured to, but if you can make them laugh, their defenses come down, and for the time being they've accepted whatever truth is embedded in your humor.

I had become an atheist at the age of thirteen, when atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.

How come the white male politicians who vote against affirmative action are always so willing to accept a handicap on the golf course?

I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

Irreverence is our only sacred cow.

As long as the government can arbitrarily decide which substances are legal and which are illegal, then those who remain behind bars for illegal substances are political prisoners

If you must give me a label, then label me a human being. I have no pride in being a human, though, because I have nothing to do with my becoming one. But, whereas animals don't have a rational code of ethics, I like to think I do. Which is where I am partisan. Moral partisanship is the reason for my "anger." And if I don't protest what needed to be protested, I might just as well be an animal.

False humility is better than no humility at all.

Listen to the speeches, one after another telling the audience what it already knows, evoking applause with necessary cliches, no longer shocking anybody with the shocking facts of the war because you can become so jaded with horror that you develop an emotional callous.

One—about cigarettes—I was pleased to see that anticigarette ad on the back issue of Hustler. I'm more offended by seeing ads for cigarettes in magazines than pictures of vaginas, because one kills and the other gives life—and I think that's an important difference.