- George Carlin: Jim, Jim, calm down, calm down. You began a sentence a little while ago with 'It shouldn't be a surprise'. It shouldn't be a surprise that rich, white men don't care about poor, black people, period. So they're not high on the list.
- Jim Glassman: George, I love you, George, but that's nonsense.
- George Carlin: I don't care if you love me or not. They're not high on the conscious or the subconscious list of those people how are in charge of things in this country, the owners. Forget these foolish elections. The owners of this country don't care about the poor, in general.
- Jim Glassman: The owners of this country? What is this, Karl Marx talking to me? The owners of this country are the voters of this country.
- George Carlin: No, you're wrong about that, my friend. You're absolutely wrong.
- Jim Glassman: Aren't the owners of this country are the voters of this country who elected George Bush?
- George Carlin: No, no, they're not. Listen, these elections are a charade, they're a charade...
- Jim Glassman: [sarcastically] Oh, okay.
- George Carlin: I'll tell you, listen, just listen for a minute and learn a little something! Elections and politicians are in place in order to give Americans the ILLUSION that they have freedom of choice. You don't really have choice in this country.
- Bill Maher: All right, speaking of brave women, I have Ann Coulter waiting for me via satellite.
- Richard Belzer: I'm going to leave.
- [starts to walk off]
- Bill Maher: Don't! No, no, you're not! Sit right there! You know what? This is what's wrong with America. People don't even want to listen to each other. She is a friend of mine, and you will listen.
- Richard Belzer: She's a Fascist Party doll! Go ahead, just show her, baby. I think she's had some work done. But go ahead.
- Bill Maher: No. SHUT UP, BELZER!
- [to Ann]
- Bill Maher: Boy, I'm trying to defend you, baby, but it ain't easy over here.
- Ann Coulter: Hey, is that Richard - is that Richard Belzer on the panel?
- Bill Maher: Boy, is he.
- Ann Coulter: I thought it was Osama bin Laden. I can only hear.
- Bill Maher: [after the interview with Ann] Ann Coulter, ladies and gentlemen! Jesus Christ, this is what is wrong with this - and I want to get to this. You know, this is a friend of mine, and this is - I think you guys - you - this is why...
- Richard Belzer: What are you talking about?
- Bill Maher: No, I'm saying that people...
- Richard Belzer: I've seen her hundreds of times.
- Bill Maher: I know, but...
- Richard Belzer: She's a repugnant person who says the most vile things. She lies. She's a liar and you know that. You just confronted her on ten different things. I mean, come on, man! Some people, you have to call them for what they are.
- Bill Maher: If I just sit here every Friday night and spout Bush administration talking points, that's not information or entertainment, it's Fox News!
- Andrew Sullivan: The "culture of life," I might say, is a phrase invented by the last Pope. And what it meant was, you're opposed to death, in the death penalty, in war, in euthanasia and abortion. The Republicans decide, "Oh, we're a cafeteria. We'll take the abortion and euthanasia but we will launch wars" and we will - I mean, George Bush has signed more death warrants than any other human being in this country.
- George Carlin: [about the Bush-Kerry Debate] Finally someone stood up to the little oil pimp. This guy who somehow has managed to combine Yale intellectualism with the American cowboy myth and be completely inauthentic in both roles. That's what I see in Bush. He's an empty suit.
- Willie Nelson: We have two cars, my wife and I, that run on vegetable oil. She has a Volkswagen. I have a Mercedes. They've never had anything in them expect 100% vegetable oil. Our bus is run on 100% soybeans. So there's no reason for us to be so dependent on foreign energy.
- Aaron McGruder: [about the then-newly released "Reagan Letters", which had many re-examining the 40th President's perceived intelligence] Let's say, y'know, ten years from now we discover all these really intelligent things that "Dubya" has written. Does it somehow make it better if he was actually a genius and masterminded the dumb thing in order to manipulate people? Does that make you go back and go "Oh, that's better. He was an evil genius instead of an evil idiot."
- Bill Maher: New rule: After the plane lands, airlines must stop saying, "Thank you for choosing us." There is no choosing anymore. I took the only flight that left within eight hours of when I wanted to go by the only other airline that went there. Choosing! Nobody chooses Southwest. Southwest chooses you! If I need to be in Spokane, Washington, by tomorrow morning, I either take the flight I'm given or I mail myself in a FedEx box!
- Kevin Costner: You know, the great thing about Vietnam, if you can find one great thing about Vietnam, was that we have Vietnam to look back on. Vietnam serves a purpose. We have this gigantic window into our past history and why we find ourselves where we're at. That's the only good I can see that that war ever did for us. And we've ignored the lesson.
- Bill Maher: 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 years if they have to!
- Gen. Wesley Clark: Bill, the key lesson - the key lesson of Vietnam is that you've got to have a strategy that has a chance of success before you commit the lives of the men and women in uniform.
- Bill Maher: New Rule: You can't run on a mistake. Franklin Roosevelt didn't run for re-election claiming Pearl Harbor was his finest hour. Abe Lincoln was a great president, but the high point of his second term wasn't theater security. 9/11 wasn't a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuck-up by a guy on vacation.
- Mario Cuomo: When President Lincoln prayed, he talked to God. When President Bush prayed, God talked to Bush.
- Tucker Carlson: I mean, look, no matter how you feel about Bush, watching him speak is difficult. It's like - it's like watching a drunk man cross an icy street.
- Tucker Carlson: Maybe in fact it was better to have Saddam in there. Maybe Saddam, as bad as he was - was not the worst we could get. Maybe chaos was the worst we could get. That's the truth.
- Kurt Vonnegut: I am not only from the richest country in the world, but the dumbest country in the world
- Dana Carvey: [imitating Al Gore] This planet is getting hot. And the only way to solve Global Warming is to elect Hillary Clinton... because that is one cold bitch!
- Bill Maher: New rule: Donald Trump must immediately submit to a DNA test to determine...
- [audience laughter]
- Bill Maher: To determine whether he is, in fact, the love child of a human woman and an orangutan from the Brooklyn Zoo.
- [audience laughter]
- Bill Maher: Look, Donald, I'm not saying that your mother was repeatedly fucking an orangutan back in the 1940s. I don't know if that's true. I hope it's not true. But given your face, your physique, your intelligence level, and of course your hair, the American people deserve some real proof that your mother did not spend most nights in 1945 covering her body in banana oil, sneaking into the monkey cage, and compulsively humping an orange-haired ape. Somebody had to say that.
- Bill Maher: [about Donald Trump suing him over his orangutan joke] You know, I tell you something: the legal system in this country, it's not a joke. It's not a toy for rich idiots to play with.
- [audience applause]
- Bill Maher: And... frankly, Mr. Balber, what you released raises more questions than it answers. At least it does to a growing chorus of patriotic Americans who call ourselves Apers.
- [audience laughter]
- Bill Maher: And we're just asking questions. Questions like "Well, here's what you put out: it's the short-form certification of live birth, not a birth certificate. It was clearly made on a dot matrix computer printer, and it includes a scannable barcode, two technologies that were hardly around in 1946."
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: "Where's the original long-form certificate?" Because a short-form copy...
- [applause]
- Bill Maher: Yeah. A short-form copy of a birth certificate, unsigned by an attending physician, isn't proof of anything. You know who I learned that from? I learned that from Donald "But I'm White" Trump.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Who would not accept the exact same document from the president. But remember who we're dealing with here: a man who, for a little extra publicity, will happily keep alive a debate over whether his family reunions are held at the zoo.
- Bill Maher: New rule: if your future plans include murdering someone, you probably shouldn't get a neck tattoo that says "Murder".
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: That's what Jeff Chapman did in Kansas, and now he wants the State to pay for the removal of his "Murder" tattoo because it might make the jury think he had murder on his mind.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: I got a better idea, Jeff: wear a turtleneck.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Or if that's too gay for you, tattoo "I didn't" on your forehead...
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: ...and then the jury will see the message "I didn't murder". Oh, who am I kidding? They'll convict you, anyway. Enjoy prison, dumbass.
- Bill Maher: Before I go about demonstrating how sadly easy it is to prove the dumbness that is dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq war, 70% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Six years later, 34% still do. Or look at the health care debate going on now; at a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "Keep your government hands off my Medicare."
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Which is kind of like driving cross-country to protest highways.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: This country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars. And we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls and replace them with study halls.
- [scattered laughs and applause]
- Bill Maher: Listen... listen to some of these statistics. A majority of Americans cannont name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe vs Wade; two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: You know, the way the "Slumdog" kid knew about cricket? But not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two Senators. And more than half can't name their Congressmen. And among Republican governors, only three got their wife's name right on the first try.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: People bitch and moan about taxes and spending; they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen. And a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Which is an absurd sentence, because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge".
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: [doing the "crazy" hand/head gesture] Sleep tight, bat shit. Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America, even though a Gallup poll says 18% of us think the sun revolves around the Earth. No, they're not stupid; they're interplanetary mavericks.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: And I haven't even brought up religion. But here's one fun fact I'll leave you with: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judiasm is an older religion than Christianity? That's right. Half of America looks at books called "The Old Testament" and "The New Testament" and cannot figure out which one came first. I rest my case.
- Bill Maher: New rule: the people who make mouthwash must explain if your product really kills 99.9% of the germs it touches, why do we need those little sanitary cups?
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Isn't it the one liquid that shouldn't need a special cup? I should be able to drink it straight directly out of a hobo's shoe.
- Bill Maher: New rule: the Oscars must become more like the Golden Globes. The Golden Globes is the woman you meet who's hot, tipsy, and fun. And the Oscars is her friend who grabs her and says "Come on, we're going home."
- Bill Maher: New rule: now that we know that this year's average Super Bowl ticket is selling for a record $5,500, and some tickets for as high as 28 grand, neurologists have to start looking into whether the fans also have brain damage.
- Bill Maher: New rule: before you ask your doctor about the new female Viagra, remember there's already medication to increase female desire. It's called tequila.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Tequila switches off the "douchebag" receptors in your brain, enabling you to have sex with a man you'd normally find repulsive.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: And best of all, you don't need a prescription. Just a lime.
- Bill Maher: New rule: if carrots ever rise up and destroy the human race, we can't be surprised.
- [a picture of a bowl of baby carrots is shown]
- Bill Maher: After all, we ate their babies!
- Bill Maher: New rule: now that many towns in America are banning sledding because the parents of children who got hurt...
- [scoff]
- Bill Maher: ...sued, someone has to tell me how not to hate absolutely everyone in this stupid country.
- Bill Maher: New rule: someone has to tell all the idiots rushing out to buy one of those new hoverboards that you can save yourself 500 bucks by just breaking your own neck and setting the garage on fire.
- Bill Maher: New rule: if, in California, Assemblywoman Shannon Grove really thinks, as she says, that the drought is God punshing California for abortion, she has to explain why Reagan leagalized in 1967 and God is just getting pissed now.
- [laughter and applause]
- Bill Maher: And if her evidence is that, quote, "Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill. It rained that night", she really owes it to herself to get her ass to Texas.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Telma, gas up the car. I know a shortcut over a cliff.
- Bill Maher: New rule: don't be shocked by Bobby Brown's recent claim he once had sex with a ghost.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Not only is it common, there's actually a scientific term for it. It's called getting caught masturbating.
- Bill Maher: New rule: if you're one of the people who scored free tickets to see the Pope when he visits, and now you're scalping them online for 500 bucks, I don't even believe in hell, but you're going there.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: Don't you see? You're cashing in on people's desperation for salvation. And that's the church's job.
- Bill Maher: New rule: once you're dead, you have to shut up about politics. North Carolina's Larry Upright - yes, Larry Upright - was such a staunch Republican that in his obituary, it said "The family respectfully asks that do not vote for Hillary Clinton."
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: And then to honor Larry, they held a moment of Fox News on mute.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: You know what, Larry? If you can think it's funny to campaign against Hillary Clinton in your obituary, then I get to think it's funny that you're dead and your name is "Upright".
- Bill Maher: And finally, new rule: when a dentist has 60 grand to drop on a safari, that's when we know there's too much sugar in the soda. You know, I don't mind it when really rich people act like assholes; well, actually, I do mind. I mind a lot. But what can you do? Of course it wasn't right when Donald Trump's asshole son Doucheface von Shitheel Trump III...
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: ...snuffed out the life of another beautiful animal to forget about his tiny dick, but...
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: ...I understand it, 'cause he's really rich. But a fucking dentist gets to do this? Your office is in a strip mall next to a Korean nail salon!
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: You make a living scraping plaque off people's teeth. And by the way, if you're a dentist itching to travel to another continent to kill something, next time grow some balls, go to Syria, and take on ISIS.
- Bill Maher: New Rule: Stop whining about the French. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to the Bush administration and that's more than I can say about the Democrats!
- Bill Maher: 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.
- Bill Maher: New Rule: Jesus is not a candle. A company in South Dakota is selling candles with the scent of Jesus. You light one and your friends says, "Christ, what's that smell?"
- Bill Maher: New rule: now that he's suing me for $5 million because he says he's proved that he is not the love child of an orangutan...
- [audience laughter]
- Bill Maher: ...Donald Trump must learn two things: what a joke is and what a contract is.
- [laughter and applause]
- Bill Maher: Now, let me catch you up on all the... how all this got started. During the last week of the presidential campaign last year, Donald Trump, who previously had been a one-issue candidate obsessed with Obama's birth certificate, announced that he would give $5 million to charity if Obama produced his college records; because a black guy getting into college? Something fishy there.
- [audience laughter]
- Bill Maher: So playing on the fact that the only other thing in nature with the same color hair as Trump's is the orange-haired orangutan, I joked that Donald Trump needed to show me his papers to prove he wasn't hiding a bad secret about his birth. This is known as parody, and it's a form of something we in the comedy business call a joke.
- [audience laughter]
- Bill Maher: Naturally, I also aped, if you will, Trump's offer of money to a charity of his choosing, which I identified as the Hair Club for Men.
- [audience laughter]
- Bill Maher: Really? We're going to court about this? Well, this upset the Donald so much they could barely get him to stop flinging his feces.
- [audience laughter]
- Bill Maher: Now... now, public figures, of course, don't always like everything that's said about them, but that's how we roll here in America. Just like we're the gun country, we're the joke country. We love our free speech, and we love celebrities getting taken down a peg. So, Don, just suck it up like everybody else.
- [applause]
- Bill Maher: But no. Nope. Not Trump. His lawyer sent me a letter; I shit you not, this is real. His lawyer sent me a letter that says, and I quote, "Attached hereto is a copy of Mr. Trump's birth certificate, demonstrating that he is the son of Fred Trump and not an orangutan".
- [raucous laughter]
- Bill Maher: Do these morons even know it's impossible for people and apes to produce offspring? And look at the... look at the lawyer's signature; it just kind of trails off, as if to say "I'm too embarrassed to even finish this."
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: "Scott S... oh, fuck it, I'm Trump's lawyer."
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: So I ignored the letter, like I ignore all letters I get from crazy people, and I forgot about the whole thing until this week, when Trump and his lawyer, pictured here...
- [a picture of a chimpanzee in a suit is shown, to raucous laughter]
- Bill Maher: When they actually sued me for the five million. And don't forget, this is not a libel case. No, no. They seem to be trying to set a bold new precedent that jokes on late-night talk shows are now legally binding agreements between the comedian and the person they're making fun of. Yes, I'm sure this will go all the way to the Supreme Court.
- Bill Maher: We're not running our country down when we criticize it. We're trying to make it better.
- [about Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry during the 2012 Republican candidate election]
- Bill Maher: Meanwhile, three of the Republican candidates have said God *called* them to be president. But, seriously, if God really did call all three to run for president, isn't he just fucking with two of them?
- Sen. Alan Simpson: [Sen. Simpson becomes angry at Bill's jokes] You're making fun of Americans who have some religious bent or a faith. Keep doing that and your people will never win an election. Because whether you and I like it or not, this is the only country on the face of the earth that was founded because of religious persecution and a belief in God. That's why they left Europe. So keep making fun of them. Keep making fun of the gays and the lesbians, pulling people in, tearing people up, thinking that Hollywood has all the brains in America, from people who are making millions of bucks on one movie and telling the rest of the people, and making fun of them, and you'll never make it, never make it.
- Bill Maher: You know, to quote the president, "I'm getting a mixed message from you, Senator." I mean, either I'm making fun of the religious people or I'm making fun of the gay people. I can't be doing both, can I?
- Sen. Alan Simpson: Well, you just made a little crack. You know, it was funny-funny, you know. Party-party. You know, those are little cracks. Those are smart, little cracks about the gay and lesbian people. You keep telling them. I think they're offensive. And I don't have to come on this program. So put that one in your pipe!
- Bill Maher: Okay, there's only one way to solve this - I challenge you to a duel!
- Bill Maher: You know, if there's one thing I've hated since 9/11, it's that thing I hear all the time, that everything changed. When obviously nothing changed. The best example from the hurricane was the firefighters who came from I forget where, but they were sent down there to help, and they were given - before they could get to the disaster area - eight hours of sexual harassment sensitivity training. Forgetting that most women want to be harassed by firefighters.
- Bill Maher: [audience cheers] And I'm glad you cheered because Ann Coulter gave me that joke.
- Bill Maher: New rule: the cast of "Hamilton" who performed on the Tony Awards without their prop muskets to raise awareness for gun control must next buy a ticket to "Hamilton" to raise awareness for income inequality.
- Bill Maher: New rule: the label on the pill bottle has to say exactly how many you need to kill yourself. On "60 Minutes", Bernie Madoff's wife Ruth says she and Bernie tried to kill themselves by swallowing a bunch of Ambien. May I make a suggestion? Swallow more.
- [groans and laughter]
- Cornel West: Oh, dear. Oh, come on. Damn. Damn. That's a...
- Bill Maher: That you survived isn't a sign from God. It's a sign you need to up the dosage.
- [more groans]
- Cornel West: No! No! No, we don't want the sister killing herself.
- Bill Maher: Every... everyone needs to calm the fuck down. It's a comedy show. If they're not booing me, you're not booing me. Shut the fuck, everybody. Shut the fuck up. Jesus Christ.
- [laughter]
- Bill Maher: It's hard out here for a pimp.
- Bill Maher: White people have always shown their superiority over blacks with their feet, moving out of black neighborhoods with the fear that their kids will turn into one of them. And now, through the magic of MTV, damned if it didn't turn out that way!
- Bill Maher: I want to see riots! I want to see the kind of riots where cab drivers are afraid to pick up white people! I want to see this guy!
- [he gives the finger]
- Bill Maher: You stayed up all night making that papier mache mask of Dick Cheney! Good! Now light it on fire and torch the nearest Gap! You're not going to make the evening news with candle light vigils. Pick up a trash can and throw it through the window of a Starbucks!
- Bill Maher: [to Richard Perle] I think you guys might have been right about the big picture, and I'm not above saying, you know what, maybe I was wrong. Okay. But on the other half of it, why the incompetence? Why was this war conducted so badly from the beginning? And you have to admit that cost lives. And my theory is because Republicans are sentimentalists. Because you guys have such rose-colored glasses about America that you thought as soon as we showed up in Iraq, they'd be going, 'Freedom! Americans!' And that's why we didn't need armor on the tanks because they'd be giving us flowers and chocolates and nylons.
- Gore Vidal: We have to move out, not on. We have no business there. We didn't care before what Iraq became and we don't care now.
- Howard Dean: I think the problem with the country is that we operate on a sickness model, not a wellness model. Basically, we treat people who become ill. What we don't do is do a very good job in keeping them healthy in the first place.
- George Galloway: Christians believe in the Prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in the profits and how to get a piece of them