philosophy

"Maybe altruism is our most primitive attribute out of reach, beyond our control. Or perhaps it is immediately at hand, waiting to be released, disguised now, in our kind of civilization as affection o…"

"I had a really typical, suburban, middle-class upbringing. The only thing out of the ordinary was being one of the few Chinese families in town."

"We have a big argument here about whether Nicaragua and Cuba are sending arms to El Salvador. Well, I don't know, so far there's no evidence that they are, but that's not really the interesting questi…"

"Our garden was debated territory between five local cats, and we'd heard that the best way to keep other cats out of the garden was to have one yourself. A moment's rational thought here will spot the…"

"The purpose of art is expression. Of course this short sentence raises many questions. By itself it is uninformative. One should specify what art can and cannot express. One should specify what art sh…"

"Ah if only this voice could stop, this meaningless voice which prevents you from being nothing, just barely prevents you from being nothing and nowhere, just enough to keep alight this little yellow f…"

"We won the tie in Barcelona but everyone talks about Barcelona winning and says we parked the bus in front of the goal. We didn't park the bus, we parked the plane and we did it for two reasons. One, …"

"Some questions are logically nonsensical because the querent thinks they know more than they do. A lot of these have the form ‘How do I use X to accomplish Y?’ There's nothing wrong with this, except …"

"The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological."

"This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits who are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth"

"An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely t…"

"I want comedians to always push themselves to be bigger than the niche that they start in. You work to get broader and broader, without being generic or pandering. And to me, that is the mission."

"We must begin by distinguishing between visual mental imagery and visual perception: Visual perception occurs while a stimulus is being viewed, and includes functions such as visual recognition and id…"

"Today, it may seem as if there are demons attacking me from within. I should remember that demons are illusory, and that when I think that I'm being attacked by unseen forces, it probably just means t…"

"It went without saying that he felt guilty about what had happened, but married friends had assured him that guilt was the cornerstone of any good marriage. It meant that a conscience was at work, val…"

"Three-quarters of dads who were in South Carolina jails for being behind in child support payments suffer from extreme poverty. And one-eighth of all South Carolina inmates are in jail for being behin…"

"Today no one who wishes to clean even a minimal regard for reason or evidence can espouse racist ideology as it was in its heyday, a system as comprehensive as Marxism and to some clearly equally as s…"

"You have been born in this world as a human being to worship God; therefore try to acquire love for His Lotus Feet. Why do you trouble yourself to know a hundred other things? What will you gain by di…"

"The philosophy of the impossible has been the dominant motive in human affairs for the past two centuries. We have pursued the mastery of nature as if we ourselves were not a portion of that nature. W…"

"I, George Carlin, being of sound mind, do not wish, upon my demise, to be buried or cremated. I wish to be BLOWN UP."