Leonard Alfred Schneider, better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was widely esteemed by artists and intellectuals and, after his death, emerged as a cultural icon among advocates of free speech and political humour. Funniest quotes and jokes by Lenny Bruce will fire up your brain and inspire you to look at life differently while making you laugh.
If you’re searching for inspirational quotes by famous comedians that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of hilarious Mitch Hedberg quotes, funny Rodney Dangerfield quotes, and Eric Andre quotes.
Most Famous Lenny Bruce Quotes
In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. Lenny Bruce
There are never enough ‘I love you’s. Lenny Bruce
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God. Lenny Bruce
If you can’t say Fuck you can’t say, Fuck the government. Lenny Bruce
Communism is like one big phone company. Lenny Bruce
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God. Lenny Bruce
I don’t have an act. I just talk. I’m just Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses. Lenny Bruce
I hate small towns because once you’ve seen the cannon in the park there’s nothing else to do. Lenny Bruce
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
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
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
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses. Lenny Bruce
Liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them. Lenny Bruce
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
I am influenced by every second of my waking hour. Lenny Bruce
The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them. Lenny Bruce
Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government. Lenny Bruce
I’ll die young, but it’s like kissing God. Lenny Bruce
If you live in New York, even if you’re Catholic, you’re Jewish. Lennie Bruce
The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds. Lenny Bruce
You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don’t think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you’re not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let’s really get basic and persecute ugly people! Lenny Bruce
All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing in the bread line right in back of J. Edgar Hoover. Lenny Bruce
There is only what is and that’s it. What should be is a dirty lie. Lenny Bruce
All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing in the bread line right in back of J. Edgar Hoover. Lenny Bruce
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
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
Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York you’re Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish even if you are Jewish. Lenny Bruce
When you’re eight years old nothing is your business. Lenny Bruce
People are leaving the church and going back to God. Lenny Bruce
The only truly anonymous donor is the guy who knocks up your daughter. Lenny Bruce
Communism is like one big phone company. Lenny Bruce
I’m not a comedian. And I’m not sick. The world is sick, and I’m the doctor. I’m a surgeon with a scalpel for false values. Lenny Bruce
Catholicism is like Howard Johnson, and what they have are these franchises and they give all these people different franchises in the different countries but they have one government, and when you buy the Howard Johnson franchise you can apply it to the geography whatever’s cool for that area and then you, you know, pay the bread to the main office. Lenny Bruce
There are never enough I Love You’s. Lenny Bruce
There is nothing sadder than an aging hipster. Lenny Bruce
If God made the body, and the body is dirty, then the fault lies with the manufacturer. Lenny Bruce
I don’t want a sharp chick who quotes Kerouac; I just want to hear my old lady say, Get up and fix the toilet, it’s still making noise. Lenny Bruce
If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone. Lenny Bruce
Life is a four letter word. Lenny Bruce
I don’t read enough books, so I guess I’m pretty shallow. I’m a lot into the physical. With me, first attraction is never intellectual. Lenny Bruce
The truth is what is. If what is is, you have to sleep eight, ten hours a day, that is the truth. A lie will be People need no sleep at all. Truth is what is. If every politician from the beginning is crooked, there is no crooked. But if you are concerned with a lie, what should be and what should be is a fantasy, a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago This is what should be and no one ever saw what should be, that you don’t need any sleep and you can go seven years without sleep, so that all the people were made to measure up to that dirty lie. You know there’s no crooked politicians. There’s never a lie because there is never a truth. Lenny Bruce
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
I don’t smoke pot, and I’m glad because then I can champion it without special pleading. The reason I don’t smoke it is because it facilitates ideas and heightens sensations and I’ve got enough shit flying through my head without smoking pot. Lenny Bruce
Miami Beach is where neon goes to die. Lenny Bruce
There is only what is. Lenny Bruce
I would be with a bunch of Kennedy fans watching the debate, and their comment would be, He’s really slaughtering Nixon. Then we would all go to another apartment, and the Nixon fans would say, How do you like the shellacking he gave Kennedy? Lenny Bruce
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
The first great break through or, rather, breakdown of society’s nudity lewdity guilt by association was the now famous Marilyn Monroe calendar. Marilyn’s respectability when she died was based principally upon her economic status, which is, in the final analysis, the only type our society really respects. Lenny Bruce
Today, I give my daughter what I really didn’t have as a kid all the silly, dumb, extravagant, frilly, nonfunctional toys I can force on her. She probably wants an encyclopedia. Lenny Bruce
Excerpt from Kenneth Brown testimony Great comics throughout literature have always disguised by comedy, through laughter, through jokes, an underlying theme which is very serious, and perhaps needs laughter because it is also painful. Lenny Bruce
Guys are like dogs. They keep comin’ back. Ladies are like cats. Yell at a cat one time, they’re gone. Lenny Bruce
Excerpt from Kenneth Brown testimony These works use often repulsive techniques and vocabulary to make to insist that people will look at the whole of things and not just one side. These artists wish not to divide the world in half and say one is good and one is bad and avoid the bad and accept the good, but you must, to be a real and whole person, you must see all of life, and see it in a balanced, honest way. I would include Mr. Bruce, certainly, in his intent, and he has success in doing this, as did Rabelais and Swift. Lenny Bruce
There are never enough I Love You’s. Lenny Bruce
With overpopulation, human misery, and the threat of war increasing, we need rather more adult performances from society. Lenny Bruce
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses. Lenny Bruce
I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to someone else. Lenny Bruce
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God. Lenny Bruce
Now, if anyone in this room or the world finds those two words decadent, obscene, immoral, amoral, asexual, the words to come really make you feel uncomfortable, if you think I’m rank for saying it to you, you the beholder think it’s rank for listening to it, you probably can’t come. And then you’re of no use, because that’s the purpose of life, to re create it. Lenny Bruce
If there was absolute freedom, people would run over babies and charge admission. Lenny Bruce
Now, if the bedroom is dirty to you, then you are a true atheist, because if you have any of the mores, superstitions, if anyone in this audience believes that God made his body, and you body is dirty, the fault lies with the manufacturer. It’s that cold, Jim, yeah. Lenny Bruce
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
War spells out my philosophy of No right or wrong just Your right, my wrong everything is subjective. Lenny Bruce
Alright, let’s admit it, we Jews killed Christ but it was only for three days. Lenny Bruce
I am not offended by war in the same way that I am not offended by rain. Both are motivated by need. I was at Anzio. I lived in a continual state of ambivalence guilty but glad. Glad I wasn’t the GI enjoying that final no wake up call sleep on his blood padded mud mattress. It would be interesting to hear his comment if we could grab a handful of his hair, drag his head out of the dirt and ask his opinion on the questions that are posed every decade, the contemporary shouts of: How long are we going to put up with Cuba’s nonsense? Just how many insults can we take from Russia? I was at Salerno. I can take a lot of insults. Lenny Bruce
Certain things are complete superstition and have no validity at all in the Bible. Yeah. They’re just the antithesis of everything that is correct intellectually. Lenny Bruce
