Top 60 Mort Sahl Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If you can’t join them, beat them.”

— Mort Sahl

2. “My life needs editing.”

— Mort Sahl

3. “There’s a danger our fiscal bankruptcy might overtake our moral bankruptcy.”

— Mort Sahl

4. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas – except the drone.”

— Mort Sahl

5. “Everything I tell you is true, but this is factual.”

— Mort Sahl

6. “I went to computer class with my Dell and I was bullied by a guy with a Mac.”

— Mort Sahl

7. “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

8. “I don’t believe in good people and bad people. I believe in the better parts of people.”

— Mort Sahl

9. “Every time the Russians throw an American in jail, the Committee throws an American in jail to get even.”

— Mort Sahl

10. “You know what I want you to do? I want you to blow out the candle and curse the darkness.”

— Mort Sahl

11. “I’m not a liberal, I’m a radical!”

— Mort Sahl

12. “That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters.”

— Mort Sahl

13. “We all know that America is the worst country in the world, except for all the others.”

— Mort Sahl

14. “People tell me there are a lot of guys like me, which doesn’t explain why I’m lonely.”

— Mort Sahl

15. “I’ve arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago. Because when I die, I want to still remain active politically.”

— Mort Sahl

16. “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

17. “You haven’t lived until you’ve died in California.”

— Mort Sahl

18. “If you were the only person left on the planet, I would have to attack you. That’s my job.”

— Mort Sahl

19. “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

20. “Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen.”

— Mort Sahl

21. “The bravest thing that men do is love women.”

— Mort Sahl

22. “We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were.”

— Mort Sahl

23. “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

24. “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

25. “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

26. “One thing about being narrow-minded: you’ll never be lonely.”

— Mort Sahl

27. “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

28. “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

29. “I never met a man I didn’t like until I met Will Rogers.”

— Mort Sahl

30. “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

31. “If you maintain a consistent political position long enough, you’ll eventually be accused of treason.”

— Mort Sahl

32. “The beat generation is a coffeehouse full of people expectantly looking at their watches waiting for the beat generation to come on.”

— Mort Sahl

33. “We claim we believe in compassion, which is an abstract, and when it’s personified we discredit the man.”

— Mort Sahl

34. “I don’t think fascism is dying for.”

— Mort Sahl

35. “I’m for capital punishment. You’ve got to execute people. How else are they going to learn?”

— Mort Sahl

36. “Washington couldn’t tell a lie, Nixon couldn’t tell the truth, and Reagan couldn’t tell the difference.”

— Mort Sahl

37. “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

38. “A conservative doesn’t want anything to happen for the first time; a liberal feels it should happen, but not now.”

— Mort Sahl

39. “A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.”

— Mort Sahl

40. “Now that Obama is at war in a 3rd country, does that mean he has to give back his Nobel Peace Prize?”

— Mort Sahl

41. “Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.”

— Mort Sahl

42. “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

43. “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

44. “When Obama ran, he said, We can change the world! The world: can you change it back?!”

— Mort Sahl

45. “A Yuppie is someone who believes it’s courageous to eat in a restaurant that hasn’t been reviewed yet.”

— Mort Sahl

46. “Obama is running again for spite.”

— Mort Sahl

47. “There’s so much Botox around now that you can’t tell when a Jewish girl is angry!”

— Mort Sahl

48. “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

49. “I don’t think crucifixion is the answer. I believe in the resurrection. I like that part of the story.”

— Mort Sahl

50. “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