"One time me and three friends dropped acid and drove around in my dads car. He has one of those talking cars, were tripping, and the car goes, "The door is ajar." We pulled over and thought about that for 12 hours. "How can a door be a jar?" … "Why would they put a jar on a car?" … "Oh man, the freeways melting!" … "Put it in the jar."
William Melvin Hicks was an American stand-up comedian and satirist. His material— encompassing a wide range of social issues including religion, politics, and philosophy— was controversial and often steeped in dark comedy.
"I was over in Australia during Easter, which was really interesting. You know, they celebrate Easter the exact same way we do, commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children that a giant bunny rabbit … left chocolate eggs in the night. Now … I wonder why were fucked up as a race. Ive read the Bible. I cant find the word "bunny" or "chocolate" anywhere in the fucking book."
"[mimics someone complaining about second hand smoke] Good theory. But guess what, if I dont smoke theres going to be secondary bullets coming your way, cause Im that tense."
"You know Ive noticed a certain anti-intellectualism going around this country ever since around 1980, coincidentally enough. I was in Nashville, Tennessee last weekend and after the show I went to a waffle house and Im sitting there and Im eating and reading a book. I dont know anybody, Im alone, Im eating and Im reading a book. This waitress comes over to me (mocks chewing gum) what you readin for?...wow, Ive never been asked that; not What am I reading, What am I reading for? Well, goddamnit, you stumped me...I guess I read for a lot of reasons — the main one is so I dont end up being a fuckin waffle waitress. Yeah, that would be pretty high on the list. Then this trucker in the booth next to me gets up, stands over me and says [mocks Southern drawl] Well, looks like we got ourselves a readah...aahh, what the fucks goin on? Its like I walked into a Klan rally in a Boy George costume or something. Am I stepping out of some intellectual closet here? I read, there I said it. I feel better."
"I saw a sign on the side of the road in Tennessee once that said dirt for sale...what a great country we live in. DIRT for sale. How would you like to get inside that guys mind and look around for a hour? That guy sees opportunity at every glance, doesnt he? Its a big world for this gentleman. Oh my god, honey! Honey quit servin waffles and come here baby. Im gunna sell dirt! Look its everywhere. You need it for our planet, honey! The place was called Land Land."
"You ever see that sign that says speed limit enforced by aircraft? Wow. Man, you get pulled over by a plane, youre going to have a hard time talking your way out of that ticket. You know how fast you were going son? Uh, 70? You were going 300 m.p.h. buddy, what the hell are you doing? Sorry sir, I had that large coffee back at the truck stop — Im fuckin flyin. HUGE coffee. I bought some dirt thought that would slow me down. Biggest motherfuckin coffee you ever seen. He pumped it right up my nose. Im just skin coverin coffee right now."
"[Someone in the crowd yells "Freebird"] Please quit yelling that. Its not funny, its not clever; its stupid, its repetitive, why the fuck would you continue to yell that? Im serious. [The same man yells something back] "Kevin Matthews"; okay, what does that mean, now? Now, what does it mean? I understand where it comes from, so do you. Now, what does it all mean? What is the culmination of yelling that? [The same man yells back again] Jimmy Shorts: hes not here, hes not gonna be here. Now what? Now where are we? Were here at you interrupting me again, you fucking idiot. Thats you. You see, we are here at the same point again where you, the fucking peon masses, can once again ruin anyone who tries to do anything because you dont know how to do it on your own! Thats where were fucking at! Once again the useless wastes of fucking flesh that has ruined everything good in this goddamn world! Thats where were at! HITLER HAD THE RIGHT IDEA! HE WAS JUST AN UNDERACHIEVER! KILL EM ALL, ADOLF! ALL OF EM! JEW, MEXICAN, AMERICAN, WHITE, KILL EM ALL! START OVER! THE EXPERIMENT DIDNT WORK! Rain 40 days, please fucking rain to wash these turds off my fucking life! Wash these human wastes of flesh and bones off this planet! I pray to you, God, to kill these fucking people! [Someone yells out "Freebird" once more] Freebird. [Falls back] And in the beginning there was the word, Freebird. And Freebird would be yelled throughout the centuries. Freebird, the mantra of the moron."
"As long as you keep getting born, it’s okay to die sometimes."
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that theres free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
"History is a strange experience. The world is quite small now; but history is large and deep. Sometimes you can go much farther by sitting in your own home and reading a book of history, than by getting onto a ship or an airplane and traveling a thousand miles. When you go to Mexico City through space, you find it a sort of cross between modern Madrid and modern Chicago, with additions of its own; but if you go to Mexico City through history, back only 500 years, you will find it as distant as though it were on another planet: inhabited by cultivated barbarians, sensitive and cruel, highly organized and still in the Copper Age, a collection of startling, of unbelievable contrasts."
"As soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one can dispense with actually ‘thinking’ it, that is, with going through the logical acts involved in verbal formulation of it. As has been pointed out, often and correctly, the advantage of mathematics—the model of all neo-positivistic thinking—lies in just this ‘intellectual economy.’ Complicated logical operations are carried out without actual performance of the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical and logical symbols are based. … Reason … becomes a fetish, a magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced."
"Our feminist culture at the present moment is completely dependent on capitalism. My grandmother was still scrubbing clothes on the back porch on a washboard!"
"A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. (23)"