1. “If you’re worth over $50m you should have to dress like that guy on the Monopoly box. The super-rich shouldn’t get all the benefits of looking like a regular guy.” – Emo Philips
2. “Always remember the last words of my grandfather, who said: ‘A truck!’” – Emo Philips
3. “I give money to Unicef because I like the ‘bang for your buck’ aspect. Here’s $10, go and save 1,000 kids from blindness!” – Emo Philips
4. “My parents had very strict rules for me. Rules like, I couldn’t be home until a certain hour.” – Emo Philips
5. “I was at the Wal-Mart, which is where I think everybody goes eventually. If they die without Christ.” – Emo Philips
6. “I lent a friend of mine $10,000 for plastic surgery and now I don’t know what he looks like.” – Emo Philips
7. “When I was a kid, my favourite time of the year when I was child was that magical first snowfall. I’d yell Yippee! Snow! and run up to the front door and shout You know the deal… You have to let me in now.” – Emo Philips
8. “I pray a simple prayer every morning. It’s an ecumenical prayer. Whether you’re Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu, I think it speaks to the heart of every faith. It goes “Lord please break the laws of the universe for my convenience. Amen.”” – Emo Philips
9. “I don’t know how electricity works. All I know is that it calms me.” – Emo Philips
10. “I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.” – Emo Philips
11. “So I’m at the wailing wall, standing there like a moron, with my harpoon.” – Emo Philips
12. “I have a lot more things to talk about now because I’m an adult.” – Emo Philips
13. “You don’t appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle-aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life.” – Emo Philips
14. “I tried body surfing once, but how often do you find a corpse?” – Emo Philips
15. “When I was a kid, I slept on rubber sheets, but now, I’m a man. And I can take the wetness!” – Emo Philips
16. “Never judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do judge him, you’re a mile away and you have his shoes.” – Emo Philips
17. “Every time I see Dan Quayle I feel like buying a vowel.” – Emo Philips
18. “My first job as a kid was going from door to door selling Christmas cards, to raise money for my grandmother’s hip replacement. Because, you know… You break it, you buy it.” – Emo Philips
19. “Not everybody hates me. Only the people who’ve met me.” – Emo Philips
20. “I’m not a fatalist; even if I were, what could I do about it?” – Emo Philips
21. “Thinking up jokes is easy. The hard part is trying them out on stage, because you never know if they’re funny until you get there. Not one comedian in the world ever really knows.” – Emo Philips
22. “The other day a woman came up to me and said, Didn’t I see you on television? I said, I don’t know. You can’t see out the other way.” – Emo Philips
23. “In our school you were searched for guns and knifes on the way in and if you didn’t have any, they gave you some.” – Emo Philips
24. “I was walking down the street the other day and these construction workers were working on the roof hammering away. One of them told me I was a paranoid lunatic… in morse code.” – Emo Philips
25. “I went into the gas station, said, Fill ’er up, Harry. The guy said, Regular? I said, No, put on a gorrila suit and dance like a fairy.” – Emo Philips
26. “I think my ex-girlfriend has weekly lessons with the devil on how to be more evil. I don’t know what she charges him.” – Emo Philips
27. “When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.” – Emo Philips
28. “You know what I hate the most? People that imitate owls.” – Emo Philips
29. “If an asteroid is coming toward you, you don’t have to blow it up. You just have to slow it down long enough for our country to rotate out of the way.” – Emo Philips
30. “My classmates would copulate with anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.” – Emo Philips
31. “I go to pick up a girl in a bar. I say will you go home with me? She says I don’t know, do you have cable? I say no, but the rope should work just fine.” – Emo Philips
32. “I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.” – Emo Philips
33. “A friend of mine gave me a Philip Glass record. I listened to it for five hours before I realized it had a scratch on it.” – Emo Philips
34. “I was feeling a bit down, I went to a therapist a few times, at a hundred bucks a pop. But then I realized that no therapy session would ever cheer me up half as much as if I was just strolling along and found a hundred dollar bill.” – Emo Philips
35. “I picked up a hitch hiker. You’ve got to when you hit them.” – Emo Philips
36. “What is eternity? You’re on the checkout line at a supermarket. There are seven people in front of you. They are all old. They all have two carts and coupons for every item. They are all paying by check. None of them have ID. It’s the checkout girl’s first day on the job. She doesn’t speak any English. Take away fifteen minutes from that, and you begin to get an idea of what eternity is.” – Emo Philips
37. “I told my wife she looks sexy with black fingernails. Now she thinks I slammed the car door on her hand on purpose.” – Emo Philips
38. “I’m a great lover, I’ll bet.” – Emo Philips
39. “I’m totally normal in every respect, but I have this one quirk – I can’t give out a number without laughing. It’s a problem when I’m giving my credit card number over the phone because they always think: ‘He must have just stolen it.’” – Emo Philips
40. “Lord please break the laws of the universe for my convenience. Amen.” – Emo Philips
41. “I think fur looks better on an animal than on a human being. So I dress my dog in a mink teddy.” – Emo Philips
42. “Libertarians believe consenting adults have the right to do whatever they choose, except band together.” – Emo Philips
43. “Once I was in a restaurant and I dropped my fork on the floor, and they gave me a new fork. So I pushed my girlfriend out of her chair.” – Emo Philips
44. “I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming. They don’t know I’m only using blanks.” – Emo Philips
45. “I think the whole concept of monotheism is a gift from the gods.” – Emo Philips
46. “A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.” – Emo Philips
47. “I never cheated on my wife. I took seriously those vows of celibacy.” – Emo Philips
48. “I’ve been at stand-up for years: after a while, you get as jaded as the proverbial gynecologist who no longer enjoys drugging and violating his patients.” – Emo Philips
49. “I’m not as good a swimmer as I used to be – thanks to evolution.” – Emo Philips
50. “My computer beat me at checkers, but I sure beat it at kickboxing.” – Emo Philips
51. “They have a sign at the beach, “no glass bottles”. I think that’s so the other sand particles don’t feel like underachievers.” – Emo Philips
52. “I like to play chess with bald men in the park although it’s hard to find 32 of them.” – Emo Philips
53. “I’ve learned that you can’t make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they’ll panic and give in.” – Emo Philips
54. “I took my grandmother to the emergency room. The doctor said that she was on an artificial life support system, and that although her brain was dead her heart was still beating. I though, “we’ve never had a democrat in the family before”.” – Emo Philips
55. “When I went to college, my parents threw a going away party for me, according to the letter.” – Emo Philips
56. “When I was ten, my family moved to Downer’s Grove, Illinois. When I was twelve, I found them.” – Emo Philips
57. “I’ve always suffered from a complete inability to sense who’s important.” – Emo Philips
58. “I was the kid next door’s imaginary friend.” – Emo Philips
59. “I used to get drunk every night until I puked. Finally I admitted, “I am a bulemic”.” – Emo Philips
60. “I’m not a fatalist; even if I were, what could I do about it?” – Emo Philips
61. “When I wake up in the morning, I just can’t get started until I’ve had that first, piping hot pot of coffee. Oh, I’ve tried other enemas.” – Emo Philips
62. “Some comedians change their style, often to their advantage; but I see no reason why I can’t continue with the “urbane sophisticate” ’til the day I die.” – Emo Philips
63. “Recently, I’ve ventured into the mammal family – so that’s good for my sex life.” – Emo Philips
64. “My girlfriend told me that she was seeing another man. I told her to rub her eyes.” – Emo Philips
65. “I had a very close relationship with another kid when I was growing up. I was his imaginary friend.” – Emo Philips
66. “I love Florida. I love the beach. I love the sound of the crashing surfers against the rocks.” – Emo Philips
67. “Don’t wear fur! Did you know, a single fur coat takes fifteen trees, just for the protest signs?” – Emo Philips
68. “I’d be in the backyard minding my own business. The other kids would call me names, like meatball head or neo-Calvinist. I’d run after them, but lucky for them the chain would snap my neck back…” – Emo Philips
69. “How many people here tonight are telekinetic? Raise my hand.” – Emo Philips
70. “When deciding between two competing theories, always go with the one that doesn’t involve a magic spell.” – Emo Philips
71. “I discovered my wife in bed with another man, and I was crushed. So I said, ‘Get off me, you two!’” – Emo Philips
72. “Even the worst comic is at least somewhat entertaining, if only in a pathological way, for five minutes.” – Emo Philips
73. “People always ask me, ‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ Well, I don’t have an alibi.” – Emo Philips
74. “I was walking home one night and a guy hammering on a roof called me a paranoid little weirdo. In morse code.” – Emo Philips
75. “I grew up in an era when strange adults would grab me on the street and say: ‘Don’t do that.’ You never see that these days. ‘Hi, we took the liberty of spanking your son.’ Oh thanks, my hand was getting worn.” – Emo Philips
76. “I always wanted a beautiful loving wife and she always wanted to be a citizen.” – Emo Philips
77. “Some mornings it’s just not worth it to chew through the leather straps.” – Emo Philips
78. “How many people here have telekenetic powers? Raise my hand.” – Emo Philips
79. “I’m filthy stinking rich – well, two out of three ain’t bad.” – Emo Philips
80. “My dad always said, If someone hands you a lemon, make lemonade. Plus that also works wonderfully as a metaphor.” – Emo Philips
81. “Whatever happened to the good ole days, when children worked in factories?” – Emo Philips