Top 80 Lenny Bruce Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The American Constitution was not written to protect criminals; it was written to protect the government from becoming criminals.”

— Lenny Bruce

2. “Never trust a preacher with more than two suits.”

— Lenny Bruce

3. “Life is a four-letter word.”

— Lenny Bruce

4. “Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.”

— Lenny Bruce

5. “There are no dirty words, only dirty minds.”

— Lenny Bruce

6. “It’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.”

— Lenny Bruce

7. “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

8. “Let me tell you the truth: The truth is what is. And what should be is a fantasy a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago.”

— Lenny Bruce

9. “Freedom of speech is a two way street, man. You have the right to say whatever you want and the Boss has a right to tell the police to arrest you.”

— Lenny Bruce

10. “Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”

— Lenny Bruce

11. “There’s a lot of money in wars, except in the war on poverty. Can’t make any bread helping the poor.”

— Lenny Bruce

12. “Darwin’s theory is as dead as he is. Everyone is surviving, fit or not. Years ago, any kid dumb enough to chase a shiny object down a well was dead, and out of the gene pool. Now they got the technology and medicine to save the fool so he can breed more open mouth breathers.”

— Lenny Bruce

13. “I tried the religion scam in Miami, so I know how hard that gig is. But, if you can get it to work, starting your own religion is a license to print money.”

— Lenny Bruce

14. “I’ve been accused of bad taste, and I’ll go down to my grave accused of it and always by the same people, the ones who eat in restaurants that reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

— Lenny Bruce

15. “What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.”

— Lenny Bruce

16. “Satire is tragedy plus time.”

— Lenny Bruce

17. “I’m not a comedian. I’m Lenny Bruce.”

— Lenny Bruce

18. “Wouldn’t it be nice if all the people who are lonesome could live in one big dormitory, sleep in beds next to each other, talk, laugh, and keep the lights on as long as they want to?”

— Lenny Bruce

19. “My mother-in-law broke up my marriage. My wife came home from work one day and found me in bed with her.”

— Lenny Bruce

20. “Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.”

— Lenny Bruce

21. “You know there’s no crooked politicians. There’s never a lie because there is never any truth.”

— Lenny Bruce

22. “If you believe there is a God, a God that made your body, and yet you think that you can do anything with that body that’s dirty, then the fault lies with the manufacturer.”

— Lenny Bruce

23. “There is only what is and that’s it. What should be is a dirty lie.”

— Lenny Bruce

24. “If you live in New York, even if you’re Catholic, you’re Jewish.”

— Lenny Bruce

25. “If something about the human body disgusts you, the fault lies with the manufacturer.”

— Lenny Bruce

26. “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

27. “Once you take away the struggle for food, clothing and shelter, work is the one four letter word that offends everyone.”

— Lenny Bruce

28. “I am influenced by every second of my waking hour.”

— Lenny Bruce

29. “When homosexuals were repressed, you got Tennessee Williams. Today’s tolerance got you Hilton Perez.”

— Lenny Bruce

30. “That’s where the conflict starts. We all want for a wife a combination Sunday school teacher and a $500-a-night hooker.”

— Lenny Bruce

31. “If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone.”

— Lenny Bruce

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

32. “Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich.”

— Lenny Bruce

33. “The reason I’m in this business, I assume all performers are – it’s Look at me, Ma! It’s acceptance, you know – Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma. And if your mother watches, you’ll show off till you’re exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!”

— Lenny Bruce

34. “The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it...”

— Lenny Bruce

35. “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

36. “Every group, every system has a set of values and morals and when you get outside those, then the alarms ring. I was politically incorrect to 95% of the country; luckily my 5% had the bread to come see me.”

— Lenny Bruce

37. “Marijuana is rejected all over the world. Damned. In England heroin is alright for out-patents, but marijuana? They’ll put your ass in jail. I wonder why that is? The only reason could be: To Serve the Devil – Pleasure! Pleasure, which is a dirty word in Christian culture.”

— Lenny Bruce

38. “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

39. “I wanted out of the navy so bad in ’45, I faked homo to get a discharge. It didn’t matter that the Germans surrendered, I knew we were heading to Japan and I was done with that scene.”

— Lenny Bruce

40. “If I just stuck to pot I might have found out what a drag being an aging hipster actually was.”

— Lenny Bruce

41. “To say whatever nonsense comes into your head without any repercussions has got to be a bigger high than heckling a movie screen in a darkened theater.”

— Lenny Bruce

42. “Every group needs a comedian. A comic who is politically incorrect at the Berkeley campus might slay them at a Klan rally.”

— Lenny Bruce

43. “I’ve talked to biblical cats, and Neanderthals who been here since day one. No one here has even seen the Big Boss. Ever.”

— Lenny Bruce

44. “Alright, let’s admit it, we Jews killed Christ – but it was only for three days.”

— Lenny Bruce

45. “Once you sleep on feathers you can’t go back to sleeping on the floor.”

— Lenny Bruce

46. “You put a guy on a desert island, he’ll do it to mud, a chicken, a barrel, anything, a knothole.”

— Lenny Bruce

47. “There is nothing sadder than an aging hipster.”

— Lenny Bruce

48. “I think it’s about time we gave up religion and got back to God.”

— Lenny Bruce

49. “I would become a priest or a rabbi or a monk or whatever the hell was necessary to perform miracles such as taking money from someone else’s pocket and putting it into mine, still remaining within the confines of the law.”

— Lenny Bruce

50. “Every tribe needs a good front man to sell the program. Who better to convince the Middle East to give up the oil, than a brown man with a Muslim name?”

— Lenny Bruce