Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car."
Life is a near-death experience.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is filled with challenges and struggles that can make it feel like a constant battle with mortality.
George Carlin’s quote suggests that the experience of living is fraught with difficulties that often remind us of our mortality. By describing life as a 'near-death experience,' he highlights the absurdity and seriousness of existence, suggesting that the challenges we face can make us feel as though we are constantly on the brink of death, both physically and metaphorically. This perspective encourages us to reflect on the nature of life and our existence within it, blending humor with a profound truth about the human condition.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about overcoming struggles, one might quote Carlin to emphasize the challenges we all face.
More from George Carlin
All quotes →If you've got a cat and a leg, you've got a happy cat. If you've got a cat and two legs, you've got a party.
This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.
Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people.
Intelligence tests are biased toward the literate.
Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
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I understand a fury in your words But not your words.
When I was doing missionary work when I was younger, which started this obsession of mine with the literature of witness, I was a translator for a missionary group, and I spent years in a Tijuana dump. People were really thrown by the fact that the Mexican poor, many of them pureblood indigenous people, seemed happy.
The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.
I am not conscious of a single experience throughout my three months' stay in England and Europe that made me feel that after all East is East and West is West. On the contrary, I have been convinced more than ever that human nature is much the same, no matter under what clime it flourishes, and that if you approached people with trust and affection you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold affection returned to you.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw, But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.
Attempts to wake before our time are often punished, especially by those who love us most. Because they, bless them, are asleep. They think anyone who wakes up, or who, still asleep, realizes that what is taken to be real is a ‘dream’ is going crazy.