“Bill Maher” quotes from Real Time With Bill Maher

He went to Vietnam because as a young man, he thought that was the right thing to do. He saw what was going on in Vietnam, came back, threw his medals away, changed his mind. Is it wrong that a guy goes to the slaughterhouse and comes back a vegetarian? Isn't that what thinking people do?

I was watching Andrea Mitchell… talking about debates, and she said, 'A sighing Gore, a sweating Nixon, a seemingly bored Bush, those unfortunate, unscripted moments that voters sometimes remember most.' And I thought, yeah, they remember most because you show it on a loop on your media 24 hours a frigging day! That's why they remember it most! It's not the voters who — it's what the media pick — the media picks out a few moments and they show it over and over again. And then people go, 'Well, Gore sighed; he's toast.'

But my question about that whole flap — the Republicans are very angry. Dick Cheney said, 'I'm an angry father.' If it's not shameful to be gay, why are their panties in a bunch about this? I mean… Right? They talk about her like she's some retarded monster they have chained in the attic. You know, if being gay is not that, why is it a controversy to bring her up? … It's an issue in this election. Don't talk about my daughter, who we're trying to discriminate against, in a constitutional amendment.

And to answer the question that people have about this conspiracy theory that he has a pack in his back, my answer is, if someone was feeding him answers, couldn't they be able to feed him better ones than he came up with?

I was watching Ashlee Simpson on Jay's show last night… She was really singing, and I was saying, 'Bring back the lip synch.' …And it struck me that Ashlee Simpson is a lot like George Bush — because she wouldn't even really be in the big leagues if it wasn't for family connections, and she's in way over her head. And she doesn't know what to do. And she blamed her band.

The key lesson to me of Vietnam is that you cannot outlast insurgents in their own country. This idea that when Bush says, 'Well, we can't say we're going to pull out in six months because they'll only have to wait six months and a day.' They'll wait a hundred frigging years if they have to!

Let's be honest - this electorate has switched because that Christian right has taken over the Republican Party. They started it in the '80s with Reagan and Pat Robertson. And like a parasite on a host, they now own it… Let's examine what 'moral values' are. Because I don't think religion always corresponds with moral values. To me — and they're very good at conflating morality with religion, just the way George Bush won election by conflating integrity with monogamy. He ran against Bill Clinton and his terrible blowjob by saying, 'I have integrity.' That's different than monogamy. Okay, the same way, when we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That's different. When they talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values.

Politically, it's always been advantageous to divide people, to make America a place of warmongers versus wimps, elitists versus morons, gun nuts versus people with normal size penises. The only problem is, it's not true. Hollywood isn't your cesspool, America. It's your mirror.

I didn't like that he [George W. Bush] lied to get us into this war. I certainly didn't like that it was conducted in such an incompetent way. But now that he's morphed the script from what it was in 2003 to 'I'm the Johnny Appleseed of democracy and we want to bring freedom to the world.' I like that script better, I have to say. I know it was bullshit how we got there. But this script I like better. And it sounds exactly like the script that Carter used to say: human rights, remember that? You can't love it when they said it and hate it when Bush says it. It's the same thing.

It seems to me like nowadays there's two kinds of issues in America. There's the kind that's too Byzantine and boring for the average Joe to even know what's going on. You know, the environment and the filibusters and the gerrymandering and what did Tom DeLay do on vacation. And then the really stupid issues that they can understand like Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And it seems to me the American people have become completely irrelevant.

Well, the American public always wanted to vote for a guy — and Bush was the perfect guy — who they'd want to have over for pot-roast. And George Bush is that guy. He does that well. You'd like to have him over for pot-roast. He reminds you of yourself. Okay. Well, now he's been over, he's had the pot-roast. But he's getting drunk and now he's talking about stem cells and Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And now he's the guest that won't leave.

It's been over a year since they graduated, but neither of the Bush twins has been able to find work. Why don't they sign up [for the army]? Do they hate America or just freedom in general?

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the city of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky! I'm not saying you don't love this country, I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint."

New Rule: Stop introducing a new iPod every month. First came the original, then the Mini, then the Shuffle, now the Nano. It's so slim Kate Moss uses it to cut her cocaine.

On the third day, when they still hadn't done anything, uh, Fidel Castro — this is not a joke! — stepped forward to offer aid. Fidel Castro had to call a news conference to say, "Some President in this hemisphere must do something." Now, what do you think Rush Limbaugh would have said if Bill Clinton had been President when that happened? He would have said, "This country has been brought so low by Bill Clinton, that Fidel Castro, a Mexican, has had to come forward… And, and by the way, Mexico did send us — another not-joke — bottled water. When you are getting clean water from Mexico, you might be a red-neck President…