15. “Tell people there is an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they will touch it to be sure.”

George Carlin most likely didn’t say this. There’s no evidence that he did.

“Tell people there is an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they will touch it to be sure.”

Granted, Carlin had some rants challenging monotheism, but there’s no evidence that Carlin ever said this particular line. This quote doesn’t show up in any of his albums, books, or HBO specials.

I heard one guy claim that it’s from one of the episodes of “Politically Incorrect” with Bill Maher that Carlin guest-starred on, and while I don’t rule out that possibility, I haven’t found proof of an appearance where he said it there.

I even ran into one person who insisted the line is from his album You Are All Diseased (1999), but it simply isn’t. Carlin does use the expression “invisible man, living in the sky” on that performance, but that’s as close as it gets.

Searching on the web, I can only seem to find the quote being attributed to Carlin since about 2012, well after Carlin passed away. I’ve found some variations before that (2002, 2003, 2006) where the quote author was left as being unknown/anonymous, and always addressed stars instead of deities, e.g.: “Tell them there are 2 billion stars in the galaxy and they will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet and they’ll have to touch it to be sure.” So the late attribution, combined with the significantly different variants, point to the quote being bogus. In fact, the star reference makes me wonder if there’s a Carl Sagan quote that this is all derived from. In any case, I haven’t been able to find a source of this particular quote, and I suppose there’s still the remote chance that Carlin said it on some earlier episode of “Politically Incorrect”, so I’m filing this one under “Likely Not Carlin’s” until evidence says otherwise.