'There ain't no one out there who's a f***in' threat to us, okay? They don't exist. I'm talking now only of countries we don't arm first.'

Bill Hicks was arguably the most influential stand-up comedian of the last 30 years. He was an inspiration for performers such as Michael Moore, Mark Thomas and Robert Newman, and many others. For the tenth anniversary of his death, this first collected work includes all Hicks's major stand-up routines, extracts from his diaries and notebooks, letters and final writings much of it never before published.

Hicks could have had his own show on prime time, could have got rich, fat and frightened. He decided not to use his gifts to confirm the prejudices of his audience. He attacked the lies that justified and prettified the carnage of the First Gulf War. He attacked the easy surrender of art to commerce, the demeaning cynicism of the marketing culture and the preposterous power of the mainstream media to confuse and corrupt. He reminded us that love is the real laugh. In this celebratory collection we can trace Hicks's evolution from brilliant stand-up to spectacular and dangerous innovator.

Bill Hicks...

On Comedy:

It's always funny until someone gets hurts. Then it's just hilarious.

On Children:

Children are smarter than any of us. Know how I know that? I don't know one child with a full-time job and children

On Just About Everything, at Once:

Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I f***, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?

On America's Foreign Policy:

I'm so sick of arming the world, then sending troops over to destroy the f***ing arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the s*** out of them. We're like the bullies of the world, y'know. We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheepherder's feet.

'Pick it up.'

'I don't wanna pick it up, Mister, you'll shoot me.'

'Pick up the gun.'

'Mister, I don't want no trouble. I just came downtown here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don't even know what gingham is, but she goes through about ten rolls a week of that stuff. I ain't looking for no trouble, Mister.'

'Pick up the gun.'

(He picks it up. Three shots ring out.)

'You all saw him - he had a gun.'

On the Evils of Pornography:

Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thoughts, that's their definition, essentially. No artistic merit, causes sexual thoughts. Sounds like every commercial on television, doesn't it?

To read more buy the book.