Top 100 Quotes About Lenny Bruce
#1. When I was younger, I listened to the greats: Winters, Mel and Carl, Nichols and May, Pryor, Carlin, Klein, Berman and lots of Lenny Bruce albums. But once I started doing fairly well, I didn't want to hear anybody's jokes or premises.
Richard Lewis
#2. Lenny Bruce is a very moral man trying to improve the world and trying to make audiences think.
Dorothy Kilgallen
#3. Mother Goose is on the loose, stealing lines from Lenny Bruce.
Phil Ochs
#4. When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'
Bob Newhart
#5. She was Bloomingdale's, not Victoria Secret. She was vanilla, not peach. She was Paul Reiser, not Lenny Bruce. This was not my kind of chick.
Christopher Paul Meyer
#6. The thing is, all my heroes were junkies. Lenny Bruce, Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Miles Davis, Hubert Selby, Jr ... These guys were cool. They were committed. They would not have been caught dead doing an ALF episode.
Jerry Stahl
#7. I agree that comedy does a good job - and is often about - stepping over the line - Lenny Bruce, etc. - and that this is important for a lot of poets too. I guess I feel like there has to be depth.
Rachel Zucker
#8. Bill Maher fancies himself the reincarnation of Lenny Bruce.
Bernard Goldberg
#9. I was about 12 when I heard my first Lenny Bruce record. He was already dead. But it changed my life and really did change the world.
Penn Jillette
#10. On the comedy side of what I love as a filmmaker are Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and Eddie Murphy; those are my favorites.
David Dobkin
#11. When I was 16 or 17, I saw Lenny Bruce being taken to jail. They took him off stage because he talked about race.
Paul Mooney
#12. Lenny Bruce described flamenco as being an art form wherein a dancer applauds his own ass.
David Rakoff
#13. I was also a big Woody Allen fan. When I got into college I listened to Lenny Bruce but it's taken me years to put him into context historically and really get what he did.
Marc Maron
#14. W. Kamau Bell is in the vanguard of a new era of American comedy for an unsettling, troubling, and strangely hopeful time. Firmly in the fearless tradition of Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, & Chris Rock. Comedy as common sense purged of the absurd hypocrisy that is Our America.
Vernon Reid
#15. My idea as far as comedy goes has always been to push the limits of what's acceptable for a woman to do or say or be. My hero in that would be Lenny Bruce, who teaches us that words have no meaning. It's the intent behind them that is what's important.
Lea DeLaria
#16. But the only comparison that I want to Lenny Bruce is that I'm funny. I'm Freddie Prinze, Puerto Rican all the way.
Freddie Prinze
#17. I mean, I was always interested in people like Lenny Bruce, people who are breaking the old rules and making new ones.
Faye Dunaway
#18. They shouldn't call anything a boot camp unless you're going off to war. Standup boot camp has been a fantastic thing, for the people putting it on. They keep you out in the woods and won't let you come back until you're funny. Lenny Bruce came up with his Religions Inc. bit on a day hike.
Andy Kindler
#19. The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs of dopey, self-serving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald - and Paul Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass.
Harlan Ellison
#20. In my opinion, Lenny Bruce was more of an influence on Zappa's satirical lyric's than anyone that I know of.
Jimmy Carl Black
#21. Any comic like myself owes everything he has to Lenny Bruce. He was the originator. The godfather of uncensored American stand-up is clearly Lenny Bruce.
Joe Rogan
#22. One night while Joan Rivers was bombing at the Duplex in the Village, Lenny Bruce walked in and caught her act. He sent a note backstage: 'You're right and they're wrong.
Kliph Nesteroff
#23. It never hurt Lenny Bruce's career to get arrested for swearing. It did back in the time, but he broke those doors down by doing the stuff that he believed in.
Joe Rogan
#24. I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce - my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions - the absurdity of the thing.
Billy Connolly
#26. My dad was a big fan of comedy. He wanted to be a stand-up. He loved Lenny [Bruce]. He also loved Lord Buckley and jazz and stuff. He was a hipster. My parents were kind of beatnik-y, you know, for Salt Lake City. But my humor, I think, came from wanting to disarm people before they hit me.
Judd Apatow
#27. Lenny Bruce died from an overdose of police
Phil Spector
#28. Joan Rivers telling Lauren Bacall her dress is all wrong is like Carrot Top telling Lenny Bruce he needs to get an edge.
Dennis Miller
#30. I'd heard that Lenny Bruce used a lot of profanity and obscenities in his act, and I was curious.
Sheldon Harnick
#31. I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like What I'm Going to be If I Grow Up
Lenny Bruce
#33. If something about the human body disgusts you, the fault lies with the manufacturer.
Lenny Bruce
#34. You got a million drug laws now because the bosses figured there was more money in putting people in jail than taxing something anyone can grow on a window sill.
Lenny Bruce
#36. The 'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no 'what should be,' there is only what is.
Lenny Bruce
#37. (On his addiction to opiods): I'll die young, but it's like kissing God.
Lenny Bruce
#38. I am influenced by every second of my waking hour.
Lenny Bruce
#39. Never tell. Not if you love your wife ... In fact, if your old lady walks in on you deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and she'll believe it: "I'm tellin' ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around her neck 'Lay On Top Of Me Or I'll Die.' " I didn't know what I was goin' to do ...
Lenny Bruce
#40. Take away the right to say 'fuck' and you take away the right to say 'fuck the government.
Lenny Bruce
#41. My mother-in-law broke up my marriage. My wife came home from work one day and found me in bed with her.
Lenny Bruce
#42. You can't do anything with anybody's body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person - you can do only one thing to make it dirty: kill it. Hiroshima was dirty.
Lenny Bruce
#43. I've been accused of bad taste, and I'll go down to my grave accused of it and always by the same people, the ones who eat in restaurants that reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.
Lenny Bruce
#44. Every group, every system has a set of values and morals and when you get outside those, then the alarms ring. I was politically incorrect to 95% of the country; luckily my 5% had the bread to come see me.
Lenny Bruce
#45. 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.
Lenny Bruce
#46. The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.
Lenny Bruce
#47. I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do.
Lenny Bruce
#48. I know what "custody" [of the children] means. "Get even." That's all custody means. Get even with your old lady.
Lenny Bruce
#49. I'm sure that half the buzz from smoking grass was the fact that it was so illegal.
Lenny Bruce
#50. I've talked to biblical cats, and Neanderthals who been here since day one. No one here has even seen the Big Boss. Ever.
Lenny Bruce
#51. There's a lot of money in wars, except in the war on poverty. Can't make any bread helping the poor.
Lenny Bruce
#52. Alright, let's admit it, we Jews killed Christ - but it was only for three days.
Lenny Bruce
#53. I wanted out of the navy so bad in '45, I faked homo to get a discharge. It didn't matter that the Germans surrendered, I knew we were heading to Japan and I was done with that scene.
Lenny Bruce
#54. If I get busted in New York, the freest city in the world, that will be the end of my career
Lenny Bruce
#55. 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.
Lenny Bruce
#56. That's where the conflict starts. We all want for a wife a combination Sunday school teacher and a $500-a-night hooker.
Lenny Bruce
#57. Communism is like one big phone company.
Lenny Bruce
#58. TV is just advertising for your live gig, so I'm playing whichever show is gonna get me the biggest crowd.
Lenny Bruce
#59. You know there's no crooked politicians. There's never a lie because there is never any truth.
Lenny Bruce
#60. There are no dirty words, only dirty minds.
Lenny Bruce
#61. There's always a down side with any freedom. It's not just homosexual freedom, but any sexual freedom comes at a price, and that is usually art.
Lenny Bruce
#62. Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.
Lenny Bruce
#63. If I just stuck to pot I might have found out what a drag being an aging hipster actually was.
Lenny Bruce
#64. I was surprised when Nixon passed the test and showed up in heaven, but, I guess Hitler threw off the curve for our century.
Lenny Bruce
#65. It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.
Lenny Bruce
#66. Once you take away the struggle for food, clothing and shelter, work is the one four letter word that offends everyone.
Lenny Bruce
#67. If there was absolute freedom, people would run over babies and charge admission.
Lenny Bruce
#68. Children ought to watch pornographic movies: it's healthier than learning about sex from Hollywood.
Lenny Bruce
#69. Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
Lenny Bruce
#70. I credit the motion picture industry as the strongest environmental factor in molding the children of my day.
Lenny Bruce
#71. Never trust a preacher with more than two suits.
Lenny Bruce
#72. I tried the religion scam in Miami, so I know how hard that gig is. But, if you can get it to work, starting your own religion is a license to print money.
Lenny Bruce
#73. Once the country was settled and built, the bosses changed the order from a stack of educated workers to a barrel of minimum wage lottery dreamers.
Lenny Bruce
#74. Every tribe needs a good front man to sell the program. Who better to convince the Middle East to give up the oil, than a brown man with a Muslim name?
Lenny Bruce
#75. When earth gets good and crowded, like 15th century England, then some new Pilgrims are gonna rocket their Mayflowers to a new solar system.
Lenny Bruce
#76. I would become a priest or a rabbi or a monk or whatever the hell was necessary to perform miracles such as taking money from someone else's pocket and putting it into mine, still remaining within the confines of the law.
Lenny Bruce
#77. 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.
Lenny Bruce
#78. The reason I'm in this business, I assume all performers are
it's Look at me, Ma! It's acceptance, you know
Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma. And if your mother watches, you'll show off till you're exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!
Lenny Bruce
#79. Marijuana is rejected all over the world. Damned. In England heroin is alright for out-patents, but marijuana? They'll put your ass in jail. I wonder why that is? The only reason could be: To Serve the Devil - Pleasure! Pleasure, which is a dirty word in Christian culture.
Lenny Bruce
#80. All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.
Lenny Bruce
#81. If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone.
Lenny Bruce
#82. Once you sleep on feathers you can't go back to sleeping on the floor.
Lenny Bruce
#83. Guys are like dogs. They keep comin' back. Ladies are like cats. Yell at a cat one time, they're gone.
Lenny Bruce
#84. Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich.
Lenny Bruce
#85. Communism is just one big telephone company.
Lenny Bruce
#86. In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
Lenny Bruce
#87. There is only what is and that's it. What should be is a dirty lie.
Lenny Bruce
#88. Let me tell you the truth: The truth is what is. And what should be is a fantasy a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago.
Lenny Bruce
#89. Darwin's theory is as dead as he is. Everyone is surviving, fit or not. Years ago, any kid dumb enough to chase a shiny object down a well was dead, and out of the gene pool. Now they got the technology and medicine to save the fool so he can breed more open mouth breathers.
Lenny Bruce
#90. I think it's about time we gave up religion and got back to God.
Lenny Bruce
#91. What you end up with is outrageousness without the laugh - comedy as electro shock therapy.
Lenny Bruce
#92. I was a Jew talking about Goyim religion. If I had just stuck to Moses, everything would have been cool. But, copping to being part of the whole Christ murder conspiracy got everyone goose-stepping again.
Lenny Bruce
#94. The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.
Lenny Bruce
#95. Freedom of speech is a two way street, man. You have the right to say whatever you want and the Boss has a right to tell the police to arrest you.
Lenny Bruce
#96. The only truly anonymous donor is the guy who knocks up your daughter.
Lenny Bruce
#97. Every group needs a comedian. A comic who is politically incorrect at the Berkeley campus might slay them at a Klan rally.
Lenny Bruce
#98. Anyone who has two shirts when someone has none is not a christian.
Lenny Bruce
#99. Part of the kick of making people laugh was doing something different. We were a rare breed - spotting one of us was like pinning a space alien, or abdominal snowman. There were maybe a hundred stand-ups in the whole country when I was doing it.
Lenny Bruce
#100. Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.
Lenny Bruce
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