Bill Maher Quotes

• Jesus is great - is there a better role model? No. It's religion, its the people who get in between - the bureaucracy, you know. ... It's the way people abuse Jesus. Was there ever a greater victim of name dropping?
• We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, that's not cowardly. Stupid maybe, but not cowardly.
• Now if you're just out of the mainstream, if you don't have blind Bush love, you are somehow suspect. Don't ever let them tell you that. Be out of the mainstream. I'm out of the mainstream. I enjoy it, who wants to be in the mainstream? When Ronald Reagan was running, he would always say 'it's morning in America' and everybody would smile and I would think 'yeah but, I'm not a morning person'. I'm the guy who thinks religion is bad and drugs are good. I think children aren't innocent, god doesn't write books, and Jesus wasn't a republican. I think girls hate each other, no doesn't mean no and being drunk is funny. I'm for mad cow disease, how am I gonna win that? I'm against suing tobacco companies. I think abstinence is a perversion. I think Bush's lies are worse than Clinton's. I think Vegas was better when it was run by the mob. I think men are only as loyal as their options. I think stereotypes are true and rehab is for quitters.
• Let's make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake - you know, to send the right message to kids.
• He went to Vietnam because as a young man, he thought that was the right thing to do. He saw what was going on in Vietnam, came back, threw his medals away, changed his mind. Is it wrong that a guy goes to the slaughterhouse and comes back a vegetarian? Isn't that what thinking people do?
• I was watching Andrea Mitchell: talking about debates, and she said, 'A sighing Gore, a sweating Nixon, a seemingly bored Bush, those unfortunate, unscripted moments that voters sometimes remember most.' And I thought, yeah, they remember most because you show it on a loop on your media 24 hours a friggin' day! That's why they remember it most! It's not the voters who - it's what the media pick - the media picks out a few moments and they show it over and over again. And then people go, 'Well, Gore sighed; he's toast.'
• But my question about that whole flap - the Republicans are very angry. Dick Cheney said, 'I'm an angry father.' If it's not shameful to be gay, why are their panties in a bunch about this? I mean: Right? They talk about her like she's some retarded monster they have chained in the attic. You know, if being gay is not that, why is it a controversy to bring her up? : It's an issue in this election. Don't talk about my daughter, who we're trying to discriminate against, in a constitutional amendment.
• And to answer the question that people have about this conspiracy theory that he has a pack in his back, my answer is, if someone was feeding him answers, couldn't they be able to feed him better ones than he came up with?
• I was watching Ashlee Simpson on Jay's show last night: She was really singing, and I was saying, 'Bring back the lip synch.' :And it struck me that Ashlee Simpson is a lot like George Bush - because she wouldn't even really be in the big leagues if it wasn't for family connections, and she's in way over her head. And she doesn't know what to do. And she blamed her band.
• The key lesson to me of Vietnam is that you cannot outlast insurgents in their own country. This idea that when Bush says, 'Well, we can't say we're going to pull out in six months because they'll only have to wait six months and a day.' They'll wait a hundred friggin' years if they have to!
• Let's be honest - this electorate has switched because that Christian right has taken over the Republican Party. They started it in the '80s with Reagan and Pat Robertson. And like a parasite on a host, they now own it: Let's examine what 'moral values' are. Because I don't think religion always corresponds with moral values. To me - and they're very good at conflating morality with religion, just the way George Bush won election by conflating integrity with monogamy. He ran against Bill Clinton and his terrible blowjob by saying, 'I have integrity.' That's different than monogamy. Okay, the same way, when we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That's different. When they talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values.
• Politically, it's always been advantageous to divide people, to make America a place of warmongers versus wimps, elitists versus morons, gun nuts versus people with normal size penises. The only problem is, it's not true. Hollywood isn't your cesspool, America. It's your mirror.
• I didn't like that he [George W. Bush] lied to get us into this war. I certainly didn't like that it was conducted in such an incompetent way. But now that he's morphed the script from what it was in 2003 to 'I'm the Johnny Appleseed of democracy and we want to bring freedom to the world.' I like that script better, I have to say. I know it was bullshit how we got there. But this script I like better. And it sounds exactly like the script that Carter used to say: human rights, remember that? You can't love it when they said it and hate it when Bush says it. It's the same thing.
• It seems to me like nowadays there's two kinds of issues in America. There's the kind that's too Byzantine and boring for the average Joe to even know what's going on. You know, the environment and the filibusters and the gerrymandering and what did Tom DeLay do on vacation. And then the really stupid issues that they can understand like Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And it seems to me the American people have become completely irrelevant.
• Well, the American public always wanted to vote for a guy - and Bush was the perfect guy - who they'd want to have over for pot-roast. And George Bush is that guy. He does that well. You'd like to have him over for pot-roast. He reminds you of yourself. Okay. Well, now he's been over, he's had the pot-roast. But he's getting drunk and now he's talking about stem cells and Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And now he's the guest that won't leave.
• It's been over a year since they graduated, but neither of the Bush twins has been able to find work. Why don't they sign up [for the army]? Do they hate America or just freedom in general?
• If I thought the Lord was speaking to me I'd check myself into Bellevue, and I think you should too.
• On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the city of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky! I'm not saying you don't love this country, I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, 'Take a hint.'
• New Rule: Stop introducing a new iPod every month. First came the original, then the Mini, then the Shuffle, now the Nano. It's so slim Kate Moss uses it to cut her cocaine.
• : I'd like to protect children, too, but: is everything worth sacrificing to that? I mean, drugs have done a lot of good. [:] They've midwived a lot of good ideas: lot of great songs, you know? I think 'Penny Lane' is worth 10 dead kids. [:] I think Dark Side of the Moon is worth 100 dead kids.
• I wouldn't touch a hot dog unless you put a condom on it! You realize that the job of a hot dog is to use parts of the animal that the Chinese can't figure out how to make into a belt?
• On the third day, when they still hadn't done anything, uh, Fidel Castro - this is not a joke! - stepped forward to offer aid. Fidel Castro had to call a news conference to say, 'Some President in this hemisphere must do something.' Now, what do you think Rush Limbaugh would have said if Bill Clinton had been President when that happened? He would have said, 'This country has been brought so low by Bill Clinton, that Fidel Castro, a Mexican, has had to come forward: And, and by the way, Mexico did send us - another not-joke - bottled water. When you are getting clean water from Mexico, you might be a red-neck President:
• New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that's one of those services that goes along with paying in. I'll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.
• New Rule: Paula Abdul must go back on drugs. 'American Idol' will always have a place in my heart. It's where I met Clay. And what could be more exciting than televised karaoke? But everyone knows the show is most entertaining when Paula is thick-tongued and sleepy-eyed and poised on the brink of yelling, 'Who wants to do me?!'
• New Rule: Airplane black boxes must now be made out of Keith Richards. The man, who has taken more drugs than Whitney Houston, Rush Limbaugh and Robert Downey, Jr., combined, recently fell out of a tree, and then crashed a jet ski. And yet, somehow, that cigarette never fell out of his mouth. What is this guy still running on? I've got to know. Because I'm beginning to think the future of medicine isn't injecting stem cells, it's injecting heroin.
• New Rule: You can't send the National Guard to Iraq and then claim it's still here. The helicopters, the humvees, the men...like Dorothy and Toto, they're not in Kansas anymore. Sorry, Mr. President, but the last documented case of a National Guardsman able to be in two places at one time... was you.
• The problem is that the people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them.
• iPhone's price reduction wasn't a price cut, it was a reduction of the nerd tax.
• If you can look at the war in Iraq, the melting environments and the descent of America into 'idiocracy,' and still think our biggest problems are boobies during the Super Bowl and the 'war on Christmas,' then you don't have values, you have issues.
• Why is monotheistic faith better than polytheistic? I mean, either you believe - if you believe in, like, a magic person who can do magic things, why is it different - so different if it's Superman or the Fantastic Four?
• They believe in the free market for profit but they want to socialize losses.
• Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion, and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there's gonna be some child fucking going on.
• If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope.
• If you think Democrats are going to take away your Bible, you're an idiot. If you think they are going to take away your gun, you're an armed idiot. If you think they're going to take away your gun and give it to a Mexican to kill your God, you're Bill O'Reilly.
• You know who's bitter in America? I am, because shit-kickers voted twice for a retarded guy they wanted to have a beer with and everybody else had to suffer the consequences
• I think they need to move the date of Earth Day because anybody who cares about the earth is still high from 4/20.
• Now, of course, there's the oft-heard refrain that she's behind in states, behind in the popular vote, and behind in the delegate count. But, I don't buy that, because I'm an American, damn it! And if there are three things I don't believe in, it's quitting and math.
• I think we need to change that old saying, 'I don't need a building to fall on me.' Because two did and we still don't get it. I think we all stick our head in the sand as a deep human impulse.
• All stereotypes are true.
• The people who are to blame are the Democrats for not having the Ralph Nader platform. Ralph Nader is right. I would welcome the Democratic Party co-opting Ralph Nader instead of blaming Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader's big issue is that America, our democracy, is being slowly strangled by the influence of corporations and lobbyists and money in politics. And that is the root of all our problems. Nothing in this country ever gets done without somebody getting paid off. Everybody talks about how everything changed after 9/11. No, nothing really changed after 9/11. We don't really have adequate protection of the homeland because it's still a matter of pork-barrel politics.
• Apparently Bob Dole's new election strategy is to find a Republican policy so stupid, even Clinton won't copy it.
• [Bush] has now convinced himself that history will be kind to him. It's just us and the press who don't get it. He's the van Gogh of presidents, you know, not appreciated in this lifetime.
• Clinton left the White House with all the class of an XFL halftime show.
• Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.
• George Bush says, 'Gore's book needs a lot of explaining.' Of course, Bush says that about every book.
• I don't dislike children, I just don't particularly want to be around with them a lot. Problem is, neither do their parents.
• I have a high state of resentment for the conformity in this country. If you're not married and having children, it's like your life is empty or you're a communist meanie.
• If I had any interest in wooden sex with strings attached, I'd get married.
• Kids. They're not easy. But there has to be some penalty for sex.
• Maybe every other American movie shouldn't be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence.
• New rule: 'Kidiots' Leave the children behind. At least until they learn something. A new study has shown that half of American high schools agree that newspapers should only be able to publish government-approved material. Almost one out of five said people should not be allowed to voice unpopular opinions: This is the first generation after September 11th, who discovered news during a 'watch what you say' administration: George W. Bush once asked, 'is our children learning.' No, they isn't. A better question would be, 'is our teacher's teaching?'
• Republicans think sex is bad because with them it always is. It is. They're just doughy, asexual, wonky white people and if you had to have sex with them it would be over in an excruciating three minutes.
• Some local Indian tribes are so upset, they're scalping tickets.
• Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit.'
• The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs.
• The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't make us better people and don't come in clearly enough.
• The House okayed the gasoline tax cut, which will increase the deficit, line the pockets of the oil companies, and hurt the environment; Dole said that if there was just some way this could interfere with people's sex lives, it would be perfect legislation.
• The jury could get the case as early as next week, but the defense says they just want to introduce one last-minute load of crap.
• The real axis of evil is the genius of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people.
• They're talking about banning cigarette smoking now in any place that's used by ten or more people in a week, which, I guess, means that Madonna can't even smoke in bed.
• Things aren't right. If a burglar breaks into your home and you shoot him, he can sue you. For what, restraint of trade?
• This is a ridiculous heat wave we're in right now, and to contribute, Newt Gingrich said that for the entire month of June, he will stop blowing hot air.
• We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.
• Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them.
• Don't become so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance.
• He's a hard dog to keep on the porch.
• Minimum Wage is actually lower than it was in 1968. That's the same year George W. Bush graduated from Yale, and that is unforgivable, and the wage thing is bad too.
• But evil is not a demon with a tail and horns. That's a Jew. And evil - evil isn't some spectral goblin with red eyes and the voice of Anthony Hopkins. That's Anthony Hopkins.
• This week, an ailing American bald eagle was found to be dying from mercury poisoning. Republicans immediately tried to blame it on the eagle's lifestyle choices. But it's worth noting that also this week, the White House threatened to veto limits on mercury pollution. Now, pure evil would be if George Bush sat around the White House saying, 'Let's poison eagles!' And even I don't believe George Bush would do that. Cheney would do that. And even he is not pure evil. Dick Cheney doesn't hate poor children and caribou. They're just in the way.

bill maher