You can also say that Carlin is like a gateway drug to harder stuff (Redd Foxx comes to mind) that your parents would definitely not want you finding out about. In that regard, I find a strong measure of pride in the fact that as I was growing up, my family would sit together and watch his HBO specials in the context of "family fare." Now that's what I call parental guidance.

Carlin open my eyes and stretched my imagination. To this day, whenever someone asks me how I'm doing, I respond "relatively decent", or if I'm feeling particularly jaunty, "I'm not unwell." His latter-day material was laced with bitterness and resent for the age we lived in, but that I consider a measure of the sharpness of his mind; a man who continually observed our society's changing paces and warned us of trouble ahead. With that said, a true measure of his impact is not by what he said, but what others have and will say about him now that he's gone; which, I'm sure he wouldn't care less about. Let us have our fun, George; it's the best way for us to realize and accept that we have lost you from our midst, but we'll never lose you from our selves.

And thanks Scott; I like it here too >;)

It reminded me of these two quotes from him, though: "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

"I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect."

Was interesting to hear his anecdotes on Fresh Air about the fairly progressive Catholic School he went to, and the former Nun who taught there who was a follower of his comedy years later. And who brought some of the less progressive members of the school/church with her to one show, which made him nervous. He was respectful enough to tweak his act a bit that night because he didn't want to make them uncomfortable.

He understood the power of words and language like no other comedian. Like Orwell understood them.

I wish we could have had Bill Hicks for this long.

# Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

# I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

# The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.

# Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money!