15 Times Louis CK Cut Through The Crap And Spoke Words of Wisdom

1. On Gay Marriage

“It doesn’t have ANY effect on your life. What do you care?! People try to talk about it like it’s a social issue. Like when you see someone stand up on a talk show and say “How am supposed to explain to my child that two men are getting married?” I don’t know, it’s your shitty kid, you fuckin’ tell ’em. Why is that anyone else’s problem? Two guys are in love but they can’t get married because you don’t want to talk to your ugly child for fuckin’ five minutes?

2. On Failure

“Whenever you leave behind failure that means you’re doing better. If you think everything you’ve done has been great, you’re probably dumb.”

3. On Raising Children

“I’m not raising children. I’m raising the grown-ups they’re going to be. I have to raise them with the tools to get throught a terrible life. That’s the way I look at it.”

4. On Hitting Children

“I really think it’s crazy that we hit our kids. It Really is. Here’s the crazy part about it: kids are the only people you’re allowed to hit. Do you realize that? They’re the most vulnerable and they’re the most destroyed by being hit , but it’s totally okay to hit them. And they’re the only ones! If you hit a dog, they will fucking put you in jail for that shit.”

5. On The Bigger Picture

“It’s not your life, it’s life. Life is bigger than you. Life isn’t something that you possess, it’s something that you take part in and witness.”

6. On The Difference Between Men and Women

“A man will rip off your arm and throw it into a river, but he will leave you as a human being intact. He won’t mess with who you are, but they will shit inside of your heart.”

7. On Being Bored

‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly. Do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’

8. On Flying

‘I had to sit on the runway for 40 minutes.’ Oh my god, really? What happened then, did you fly through the air like a bird, incredibly? Did you soar into the clouds, impossibly? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight and then land softly on giant tires that you couldn’t even conceive how they fucking put air in them?…You’re sitting in a chair in the sky. You’re like a Greek myth right now.

9. On Cell Phones and Being Alone

I think these things are toxic, especially for kids…they don’t look at people when they talk to them and they don’t build empathy. You know, kids are mean, and it’s ’cause they’re trying it out. They look at a kid and they go, ‘you’re fat,’ and then they see the kid’s face scrunch up and they go, ‘oh, that doesn’t feel good to make a person do that.’ But they got to start with doing the mean thing. But when they write ‘you’re fat,’ then they just go, ‘mmm, that was fun, I like that.’ …
You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That’s being a person. Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty—forever empty. That knowledge that it’s all for nothing and that you’re alone. It’s down there. And sometimes when things clear away, you’re not watching anything, you’re in your car, and you start going, ‘oh no, here it comes. That I’m alone.’ It’s starts to visit on you. Just this sadness. Life is tremendously sad, just by being in it…

10. On Being Optimistic

You’ve got to be optimistic to be single. Stupid. You’ve got to be stupid. That’s what optimistic means, ya know. It means stupid. An optimist is someone who goes “Hey, maybe something nice will happen!” WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYTHING NICE HAPPEN? What are you, stupid?

11. On Choosing Your Words Wisely

“As humans, we waste the shit out of our words. It’s sad. We use words like “awesome” and “wonderful” like they’re candy. It was awesome? Really? It inspired awe? It was wonderful? Are you serious? It was full of wonder? You use the word “amazing” to describe a goddamn sandwich at Wendy’s. What’s going to happen on your wedding day, or when your first child is born? How will you describe it? You already wasted “amazing” on a fucking sandwich.”

12. On Divorce

Divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce … That would be sad. If two people were married and they were really and they just had a great thing and then they got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has happened zero times.

13. On 9/11

Even after 9/11, during the darkest moment of our recent history, the President told us, “Go shopping.” That’s how we were told to uphold American values; go out and fucking buy more shit.

14. On Technical High Schools

I did a show in New Jersey in the auditorium of a technical high school … Technical high school, that’s where dreams are narrowed down. We tell our children, “You can do anything you want.” Their whole lives. “You can do anything!” But this place, we take kids – they’re 15, they’re young – and we tell them, “You can do eight things. We got it down to eight for you.”

15. On Being Self Aware

“Self-love is a good thing but self-awareness is more important. You need to once in a while go ‘Uh, I’m kind of an asshole.”