Mort Sahl

Mort Sahl is a Montreal-born stand-up comedian. After serving in the Air Force Sahl graduated from the University of Southern California where he had majored in city management and traffic engineering. Sahl is a comedian and political satirist.

Politics

• 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.
• About his ideology, "I'm not a Liberal, I'm a Radical!"
• About Liberals and Conservatives, "Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen."
• About Politics & Evolution, "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!"
• About George W. Bush, "He's the face on the can. But who canned that soup?"
• About Cosmetic Sugery, "There's so much Botox around now that you can't tell when a Jewish girl is angry!"
• Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference. (1987)
• Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.
• A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.
• Nixon's the kind of guy that if you were drowning 50 feet off shore, he'd throw you a 30 foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way. (1973)

Relationships

• 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.
• The bravest thing that men do is love women.
• People tell me there are a lot of guys like me, which doesn't explain why I'm lonely.
• We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were.

Miscellaneous

• About Comedy, "It has changed. It isn't funny anymore!"
• To Otto Preminger about his film Exodus, "Otto - let my people go" (reputed - referring to its 220 minute length)
• Asked his motto: "If you can't join them, beat them."
• You haven't lived until you've died in California.
• I found people looked better when they laughed.

Sources

• Lewontin, Richard (2000). The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment. Cambridge (MA). Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00159-1