15 Quotes From The Dark and Ingenious Mind of Bill Hicks

“Folks, it’s time to evolve. That’s why we’re troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything’s failing? It’s because, um – they’re no longer relevant. We’re supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?”

There are few stand-ups in the history of comedy who possessed more passion and vitriol than Bill Hicks. As with all the greats (Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor) he pushed the art-form to its limits, extracting alchemical gold from some of the darkest aspects of the human psyche. Nothing was untouchable. Everything from the war on drugs to the abortion debate to television being ‘Lucifer’s Dream Box’ were covered during his seemingly off-the-hook but meticulously well-crafted stage performances. At one point he actually displayed footage he shot himself of the tragedy in Waco Texas to demonstrate how the media distorts the truth and crafts propaganda to fit its agenda. One need only watch a handful of his performances to get a clear idea of his on-stage persona as an angry, outside-of-the box thinker with a razor-sharp mind and wits set on ‘kill’.