Sahl Quotes & Sayings

I don't think crucifixion is the answer. I believe in the resurrection. I like that part of the story. — Mort Sahl

I watched Ken Burns' Civil War series on PBS. My favorite segment is when Bob Hope entertains the troops at Gettysburg. — Mort Sahl

Those who the gods would make rich and famous on TV, they first drive mad. — Mort Sahl

Remember when movies were just good or bad, before auteurs, film festivals, and guys from USC who were the first to shoot underwater? — Mort Sahl

I made the mistake early in my career, when I moved to Hollywood, of being attracted to actresses. I used to go out exclusively with actresses and other female impersonators. — Mort Sahl

Bush is the face on the can. But who canned that soup? — Mort Sahl

I've arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago. Because when I die, I want to still remain active politically. — Mort Sahl

You haven't lived until you've died in California — Mort Sahl

We all know that America is the worst country in the world, except for all the others. — Mort Sahl

Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference. — Mort Sahl

I found people looked better when they laughed — Mort Sahl

There's so much Botox around now that you can't tell when a Jewish girl is angry! — Mort Sahl

Obama is running again for spite. — Mort Sahl

A Yuppie is someone who believes it's courageous to eat in a restaurant that hasn't been reviewed yet. — Mort Sahl

The distance between taking social action and having the knowledge is as wide as the mouth of the Mississippi. — Mort Sahl

My life needs editing. — Mort Sahl

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost. — Mort Sahl

You know what I want you to do? I want you to blow out the candle and curse the darkness. — Mort Sahl

My whole life is a movie. It's just that there are no dissolves. I have to live every agonizing moment of it. My life needs editing. — Mort Sahl

If you were the only person left on the planet, I would have to attack you. That's my job. — Mort Sahl

Women want their men to be cops. They want you to punish them and tell them what the limits are. The only thing that women hate worse from a man than being slapped is when you get on your knees and say you're sorry. — Mort Sahl

Hillary's explanation of the Libyan action to Congress was so good, I wonder who explained it to her? — Mort Sahl

You don't know what you think unless you say it. — Mort Sahl

One thing about being narrow-minded: you'll never be lonely. — Mort Sahl

Now that Obama is at war in a 3rd country, does that mean he has to give back his Nobel Peace Prize? — Mort Sahl

A political satirist's job is to draw blood. I'm not so much interested in politics as I am in overthrowing the government. — Mort Sahl

I'm a radical, and I always have been. — Mort Sahl

That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters. — Mort Sahl

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

I'm for capital punishment. You've got to execute people. How else are they going to learn? — Mort Sahl

A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now. — Mort Sahl

I took benzedrine - I got clairvoyance. With benzedrine you can have a very wide view of the world, like you can decide the destiny of man and other pressing problems, such as which is the left sock? — Mort Sahl

Television is never more false than when it's openly sincere. — Mort Sahl

Will Rogers ... used to come out with a newspaper and pretend he was a
yokel criticizing the intellectuals who ran the government. I come out with
a newspaper and pretend I'm an intellectual making fun of the yokels
running the government. — Mort Sahl

A conservative doesn't want anything to happen for the first time; a liberal feels it should happen, but not now. — Mort Sahl

This matter of two sides to every question is bad logic and bad practice: sometimes there are no sides; sometimes there are a hundred. — Mort Sahl

The fact is that you can't have a good relationship with a girl who hasn't settled things with her father. — Mort Sahl

Remember that no matter how selfish, how cruel, how unfeeling you have been today, every time you take a breath, you make a flower happy. — Mort Sahl

I'm not a liberal, I'm a radical! — Mort Sahl

When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly. — Mort Sahl

People tell me there are a lot of guys like me, which doesn't explain why I'm lonely. — Mort Sahl

I didn't think that anything is beyond humor - not profane humor, but a good, honest approach to humor. — Mort Sahl

Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times. — Mort Sahl

Obama said he went to Libya because of his conscience. Did anyone ever wrestle with his conscience and lose? — Mort Sahl

Most people past college age are not atheists. It's too hard to be in society, for one thing. Because you don't get any days off. And if you're an agnostic you don't know whether you get them off or not. — Mort Sahl

The bravest thing that men do is love women. — Mort Sahl

In the forties, to get a girl you had to be a GI or a jock. In the fifties, to get a girl you had to be Jewish. In the sixties, to get a girl you had to be black. In the seventies, to get a girl you've got to be a girl. — Mort Sahl

You know me, I love lost causes. — Mort Sahl

When Obama ran, he said, We can change the world! The world: can you change it back?! — Mort Sahl

If you can't join them, beat them. — Mort Sahl

If you maintain a consistent political position long enough, you'll eventually be accused of treason. — Mort Sahl

There were four million people in the American Colonies and we had Jefferson and Franklin. Now we have over 200 million and the two top guys are Clinton and Dole. What can you draw from this? Darwin was wrong! — Mort Sahl

We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were. — Mort Sahl

I attended Amherst College from 1951 to 1955. The first two years were a revelation. There were innumerable exchanges with brilliant classmates, among them the playwright Ralph Allen, the classics scholar Robert Fagles, and the composer Michael Sahl. — Edmund Phelps

The beat generation is a coffeehouse full of people expectantly looking at their watches waiting for the beat generation to come on. *1958 — Mort Sahl

Everything I tell you is true, but this is factual. — Mort Sahl

The New York Times is the official leak of the State Department. — Mort Sahl

Obama says his recreation consists of reading the Constitution ... looking for a loophole. — Mort Sahl

Every time the Russians throw an American in jail, the Committee throws an American in jail to get even. — Mort Sahl

We claim we believe in compassion, which is an abstract, and when it's personified we discredit the man — Mort Sahl

I went to computer class with my Dell and I was bullied by a guy with a Mac. — Mort Sahl

There's a danger our fiscal bankruptcy might overtake our moral bankruptcy. — Mort Sahl

There are Russian spies here now. And if we're lucky, they'll steal some of our secrets and they'll be two years behind. — Mort Sahl

I used to go to two movies every week for the Saturday matinee when I was a kid. — Mort Sahl

Mort Sahl, while attending a preview of Otto Preminger's film Exodus, stood up and called out, Otto, let my people go! — Mort Sahl

New book on Malcolm X says we don't know how he was killed. Want to bring in the FBI. Maybe they were in already. — Mort Sahl

Nixon's the kind of guy that if you were drowning fifty feet off shore, he'd throw you a thirty foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way. — Mort Sahl

I never met a man I didn't like until I met Will Rogers. — Mort Sahl

I don't believe in good people and bad people. I believe in the better parts of people. — Mort Sahl

Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen. — Mort Sahl

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

I don't think fascism is dying for. — Mort Sahl

If someone were to ask me for a short cut to sensuality, I would suggest he go shopping for a used 427 Shelby-Cobra. But it is only fair to warn you that of the 300 guys who switched to them in 1966, only two went back to women. — Mort Sahl