Bill Maher

Bill Maher (1956 –)

Comedian , actor , writer and producer

Verified

• "Apparently Bob Dole's new election strategy is to find a Republican policy so stupid, even Clinton won't copy it."
• "Clinton left the White House with all the class of an XFL halftime show."
• "Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease."
• "George Bush says, 'Gore's book needs a lot of explaining.' Of course, Bush says that about every book."
• "I have a high state of resentment for the conformity in this country. If you're not married and having children, it's like your life is empty or you're a communist meanie."
• "It was like Ground Hog Day. He popped out of a hole, and we got four more years of Bush." [Referring to Saddam Hussein 's capture]
• "Kids. They're not easy. But there has to be some penalty for sex."
• "Let's make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake -- you know, to send the right message to kids."
  • Source: "Valentine's Day, that great state holiday." Boston Globe. 14 Feb. 2004. [1]
• "Men are only as loyal as their options."
• "Some local Indian tribes are so upset, they're scalping tickets." [Referring to the 1995 opening of Disney's movie Pocahontas]
• "Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit.'"
• "The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs."
• "The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't make us better people and don't come in clearly enough."
• "The House okayed the gasoline tax cut, which will increase the deficit, line the pockets of the oil companies, and hurt the environment; Dole said that if there was just some way this could interfere with people's sex lives, it would be perfect legislation"
• "The jury could get the case as early as next week, but the defense says they just want to introduce one last-minute load of crap." [Referring to the O.J. Simpson trial]
• "They're talking about banning cigarette smoking now in any place that's used by ten or more people in a week, which, I guess, means that Madonna can't even smoke in bed."
• "Things aren't right. If a burglar breaks into your home and you shoot him, he can sue you. For what, restraint of trade?"
• "This is a ridiculous heat wave we're in right now, and to contribute, Newt Gingrich said that for the entire month of June, he will stop blowing hot air."
• "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." (Controversial response to assertion that the 9/11 hijackers who flew into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were cowards.)
• "NEW RULE: 'Kidiots' Leave the children behind. At least until they learn something. A new study has shown that half of American high schools agree that newspapers should only be able to publish government-approved material. Almost one out of five said people should not be allowed to voice unpopular opinions..This is the first generation after September 11th, who discovered news during a 'watch what you say' administration...George W. Bush once asked, 'is our children learning.' No, they isn't. A better question would be, 'is our teacher's teaching?'"
• "Maybe every other American movie shouldn’t be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence."
• "We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities."
• "Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them."
• "If I had any interest in wooden sex with strings attached, I'd get married." [About puppets having sex in the film Team America: World Police.]
• "A lot of good has come from drugs. I think 'Penny Lane' is worth 10 dead kids. Dark Side of the Moon is worth 100 dead kids. Because a lot of kids wouldn't even be born if it weren't for that album, so it evens out."

On the idea of Hollywood vs. America:

• Politically, it's always been advantageous to divide people, to make America a place of warmongers versus wimps, elitists versus morons, gun nuts versus people with normal size penises. The only problem is, it's not true. Hollywood isn't your cesspool, America. It's your mirror. -- 2005 February 25 from Real Time with Bill Maher

Regarding Sen. John Kerry on the charges of being a 'flip-flopper':

• "He went to Vietnam because as a young man, he thought that was the right thing to do. He saw what was going on in Vietnam, came back, threw his medals away, changed his mind. Is it wrong that a guy goes to the slaughterhouse and comes back a vegetarian? Isn't that what thinking people do?" -- 2004 July 30 from Real Time with Bill Maher

Regarding the issue of same-sex marriage and how it relates to Mary Cheney , lesbian duaghter of Vice President Dick Cheney

• "But my question about that whole flap - the Republicans are very angry. Dick Cheney said, 'I'm an angry father.' If it's not shameful to be gay, why are their panties in a bunch about this? I mean... Right? They talk about her like she's some retarded monster they have chained in the attic. You know, if being gay is not that, why is it a controversy to bring her up? ...It's an issue in this election. Don't talk about my daughter, who we're trying to discriminate against, in a constitutional amendment." -- 2004 October 15

Regarding the question of conspiracy behind the bulge in George W. Bush's back during one of the Presidential debates in the fall of 2004

• "And to answer the question that people have about this conspiracy theory that he has a pack in his back, my answer is, if someone was feeding him answers, couldn't they be able to feed him better ones than he came up with?" -- 2004 October 15, from Real Time with Bill Maher

On the media's influence on voters' perceptions

• "I was watching Andrea Mitchell ... talking about debates, and she said, 'A sighing Gore, a sweating Nixon, a seemingly bored Bush, those unfortunate, unscripted moments that voters sometimes remember most.' And I thought, yeah, they remember most because you show it on a loop on your media 24 hours a friggin' day! That's why they remember it most! It's not the voters who - it's what the media pick - the media picks out a few moments and they show it over and over again. And then people go, 'Well, Gore sighed; he's toast.'" -- 2004 October 01, from Real Time with Bill Maher

A few days after the 2004 Presidential election

• "...Let's be honest - this electorate has switched because that Christian right has taken over the Republican Party. They started it in the '80s with Reagan and Pat Robertson. And like a parasite on a host, they now own it... Let's examine what 'moral values' are. Because I don't think religion always corresponds with moral values. To me - and they're very good at conflating morality with religion, just the way George Bush won election by conflating integrity with monogamy. He ran against Bill Clinton and his terrible blowjob by saying, 'I have integrity.' That's different than monogamy. Okay, the same way, when we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That's different. When they talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values." -- 2004 November 05, from Real Time with Bill Maher

On George W. Bush

• "I was watching Ashlee Simpson on Jay's show last night... She was really singing, and I was saying, 'Bring back the lip synch.' ...And it struck me that Ashlee Simpson is a lot like George Bush-because she wouldn't even really be in the big leagues if it wasn't for family connections, and she's in way over her head. And she doesn't know what to do. And she blamed her band." -- 2004 October 29, from Real Time with Bill Maher
• "I didn't like that he lied to get us into this war. I certainly didn't like that it was conducted in such an incompetent way. But now that he's morphed the script from what it was in 2003 to 'I'm the Johnny Appleseed of democracy and we want to bring freedom to the world.' I like that script better, I have to say. I know it was bullshit how we got there. But this script I like better. And it sounds exactly like the script that Carter used to say: human rights, remember that? You can't love it when they said it and hate it when Bush says it. It's the same thing." -- 2005 February 25, from Real Time with Bill Maher

On the Vietnam War

• "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 friggin' years if they have to!" -- 2004 October 29, from Real Time with Bill Maher