Real Time With Bill Maher quotes

New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that's one of those services that goes along with paying in. I'll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.

New Rule: Paula Abdul must go back on drugs. "American Idol" will always have a place in my heart. It's where I met Clay. And what could be more exciting than televised karaoke? But everyone knows the show is most entertaining when Paula is thick-tongued and sleepy-eyed and poised on the brink of yelling, "Who wants to do me?!"

New Rule: Airplane black boxes must now be made out of Keith Richards. The man, who has taken more drugs than Whitney Houston, Rush Limbaugh and Robert Downey Jr., combined, recently fell out of a tree, and then crashed a jet ski. And yet, somehow, that cigarette never fell out of his mouth. What is this guy still running on? I've got to know. Because I'm beginning to think the future of medicine isn't injecting stem cells, it's injecting heroin.

I know this is uncomfortable for the "faith over facts" crowd, but the "greatness" of a country can, to a large extent, be measured. Here are some numbers: infant mortality rate, America ranks 48th in the world; overall health, 72nd; freedom of the press, 44; literacy, 55th. Do you realize there are twelve-year-old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with?....In most of the industrialized world nearly everyone has healthcare; and hardly anyone doubts evolution; and yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It's why America isn't gonna be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell research, because Jesus thinks it's too close to cloning.

When they [Republicans] say "They're going to raise taxes", you say "We have to, because someone spent all the money in the world cutting Paris Hilton's taxes and not killing Osama Bin Laden."

New Rule: You can't send the National Guard to Iraq and then claim it's still here. The helicopters, the humvees, the men...like Dorothy and Toto, they're not in Kansas anymore. Sorry, Mr. President, but the last documented case of a National Guardsman able to be in two places at one time... was you.

iPhone's price reduction wasn't a price cut, it was a reduction of the nerd tax.

We won't stop being sick until we stop making ourselves sick. Because there is a point where even the most universal government health program can't help you. They can't outlaw unhealthy food, or alcohol, or cigarettes. Just pot, sadly. Because, you see, the government is not your nanny; they're your dealer. And they've subsidized illness in this country. They have to, there's too much money in it. You see, there's no money in healthy people, and there's no money in dead people. The money is in the middle: people who are alive, sort of, but with one or more chronic conditions that puts them in need of Celebrex, or Nasinex, or Valtrex, or Lunesta. Fifty years ago, children didn't even get Type-2 diabetes. Now it's an emerging epidemic, as are a long list of ailments that used to be rare, and have now been...mainstreamed. Things like asthma, and autism, and acid reflux, and arthritis, allergies, adult acne, attention deficit disorder. And that's just the A's. Doesn't anybody wonder why we live with all this illness?

In Hillary Clinton's health plan the words "diet" and "exercise" appear once. The word "drugs"? Fourteen times. Just like the pharmaceutical companies wanted. You know, their add weasels like to say "When diet and exercise fail..." Well, diet and exercise don't fail, a fact brought home last week by a new Duke University study that shows exercise – yes, exercise – is just as effective a cure for depression as Paxil and Zoloft. So ask your doctor if getting off your ass is right for you!

If you can look at the war in Iraq, the melting environments and the descent of America into "idiocracy," and still think our biggest problems are boobies during the Super Bowl and the "war on Christmas," then you don't have values, you have issues.

I'm sure if you asked "What would Jesus veto?", it wouldn't be health care for sick kids.

Why is monotheistic faith better than polytheistic? I mean, either you believe – if you believe in, like, a magic person who can do magic things, why is it different – so different if it's Superman or the Fantastic Four?

They believe in the free market for profit but they want to socialize losses.

Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion, and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there's gonna be some child fucking going on.

If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope.