George Carlin School Quotations

When you quit school at an early age, I think you have a lifelong need to show the world - and maybe yourself - that you're really smart after all.

The fact that I didn't finish school left me with a lifelong need to prove that I'm smart, prove it to myself, maybe to the world. I [also] needed to be - not the center of attention - but I needed to be able to attract attention when I wanted it, through my stunts and my fooling around physically with faces or postures or voices I would do. Those things are important elements in the drive behind all of this [my career].

I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and my mother would get drunk and try to make pancakes

Because we were a poor area, the school had a small budget and was unable to teach the second half of the alphabet.

When I got out of high school they retired my jersey, but it was for hygiene and sanitary reasons.

I often wonder how different the world would be if Hitler had not been turned down when he applied to art school.

In high school, when I first heard of entropy, I was attracted to it immediately. They said that in nature all systems are breaking down, and I thought, What a wonderful thing; perhaps I can make some small contribution to this process, myself.

[On School Uniforms] Don't these schools do enough damage making all these kids think alike, now they have to make them look alike too? It's not a new idea, either. I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand because the narration was in German.

I did a lot of thinking, and used mental activity to relieve whatever feelings I had. I became very left-brained, and I was good in school. That is, I was a smart kid.

I had run away from home three times. I had been kicked out of three different schools under different circumstances. I was kicked out of everything that I didn't quit. Kicked out of schools. Kicked out of summer camp, the Boy Scouts, the alter boys, the choir, and something else that I can't think of, that I'm proud of. Anyway, that was my pattern. I just began to invent myself early in life, and went out and did something about it.

People think life is real complicated. Actually, there's nothing to it. Once you leave out all the bullshit they teach you in school, life gets really simple.

I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me.

The things they don't tell you in schools these days, geez. Have a look at your owners. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice; you have owners. They own you. They own everything.

I quit school in ninth grade, even though I was good at the studies. I knew I didn't need school for what I wanted.

Catholic school gave me the tools to reject the very religion they wanted me to have. They taught me how to think for myself and to be independent.