Norman Lear, the progressive creator of “All in the Family,” crafted the iconic Archie Bunker character, a “lovable bigot” who, despite his prejudiced views, was imbued with humanity. Lear, who passed away at 101 on December 4, 2023, revolutionized sitcoms by introducing social commentary into the genre.
In a 2022 op-ed for The New York Times, Lear reflected on the show’s inception in 1971, stating, “Encouraging that kind of conversation was a goal of mine. The kinds of topics Archie Bunker and his family argued about—issues that were dividing Americans from one another, such as racism, feminism, homosexuality, the Vietnam War, and Watergate—were certainly being talked about in homes and families. They just weren’t being acknowledged on television.”
Here are some of the best quotes from Archie Bunker in “All in the Family.” Be warned, these quotes reflect a character with views that are controversial and certainly not representative of today’s primetime broadcast TV standards:
- “Everyone I like stays the Hell away from me.”
- “We’re just sweeping dirty dishes under the rug.”
- “No bum that can’t speak poifect English oughta stay in this country—oughta be de-exported the hell outta here!”
- “The Lord might be smilin’ on the sheep, but they still wind up as lamb chops.”
- “Hell hath no fury like a woman’s corns.”
- “We better not, you know, kill our chickens before they cross the road.”
- “It’s too late Edith, my bus has sailed.”
- “Up the creek without a saddle.”
- “She takes everything I say out of contest.”
- “What ya do in the privates of your room is your own privates.”
- “The dent in his car is hardly cold and he’s coming over here to claim his pound of fish.”
- “God can do anything! He can turn your jawbone into an ass!”
- “Patience is a virgin.”
- “If it’s too hot in the kitchen, stay away from the cook.”
- “Mrs. O’Leary’s cow is sorry, but Cleveland burned anyway.”
- “Entertainment is a thing of the past. Now we got television!”
- “Gonna take all of my thinking and all of my consecration.”
- “This is only a little mispensation.”
- “Why don’t you take a high dive into the clam drip?”
- “That ain’t superstition — that’s self-perservation.”
- “Don’t draw me no diaphragms.”
- “Buy one of them battery transvester radios.”
- “They got the greatest country in the world right here. The highest standard of living. The grossest national product.”
- “Meathead! Dead from the neck up.”
- “Anybody that goes to see a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined!”
- “I ain’t no bigot. I’m the first guy to say, ‘It ain’t your fault that youse are colored.'”
- “Was Uncle Oscar’s death very untimely, you ask? Well, it was near lunch.”
- “Wouldn’t have to live in miscomfort.”
- “She caught a touch of laryngosis from the smoke.”
- “I’m sympathizing my watch with yours.”
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- “Why don’t you go back to bartending school and take a course in ‘shut up?'”
- “God don’t make no mistakes, that’s how he got to be God.”
- “I am B-U-Z-Y. Busy!”
- “There’s a strong criminal element up there.”
- “Every man should be king of his castle.”
- “Them Sicilians are famous for two things: Spaghetti and revenge.”
- “I got a unanimous letter.”
- “Dummy up.”
- “Next time you want to time something, Edith, just let the sand run out of your head.”
- “Somebody’s gotta be dead, that’s life.”
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- “I’ve never seen a man so low and depaved.”
- “I wake up on a Saturday morning, I’m all alone. There’s no note, no nothing. There’s nobody here.”
- “In the Bible it says God made man in his own image. He made women after, from a cheaper cut.”
- “It ain’t German to the conversation.”
- “All of them old Bible people, they was always eatin’ meat, as soon as they found out eatin’ apples was wrong. It’s true. On special occasions, goats, lambs — whoever heard of sacrificing a head of lettuce?”
- “Well, I’ll tell you one thing about President Nixon. He keeps Pat home. Which was where Roosevelt should have kept Eleanor. Instead, he let her run around loose until one day she discovered the colored. We never knew they were there. She told them they were gettin’ the short end of the stick and we been having trouble ever since.”
- “Remember, don’t talk to strangers unless you know them very well.”
- “Tell her I ain’t crawlin’ home to her with my tail between her legs.”
- “That one kind of grapes on my nerves.”
- “We didn’t crawl out from under no rocks, we didn’t have no tails, and we didn’t come from monkeys you atheistic pinko meathead.”
- “All of ’em come in here, and they’re all free to live in their own separate sections where they feel safe. And they’ll bust your head if you go in there. That’s what makes America great, buddy.”
- “We hold these semi-animal meetings.”
- “That was the year they let Jackie Robinson into the Majors. Changed the whole complexion of the game, in more ways than one.”
- “When you have a machine gun in your hand, you have the right to say whatever you want!”
- “After once or twice a thing like this gets vulgarious.”
- “That woman is liable to come at you like a Doberman’s Pincher.”
- “Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother’s side.”
- “You’re breakin’ about 18 laws, maybe even a dozen.”
- “Don’t talk like an ignarosis.”
- “Probably a torn filament right there in the kneecap.”
- “The only thing that holds a marriage together is the husband being big enough to step back and see where the wife is wrong.”
- “That’s the kind of luck poor Mr. Lincoln had the night he went to the movies … as he sat in John Wilkes’ booth.”
- “I’d say that the Meathead probably got magnesia and forgot where his mouth was.”
- “The Meathead swooped down on the table like a plague of crocuses.”
- “There’s nothing wrong with revenge — it’s the best way to get even.”
- “You are invading the issue!”
- “I would have brung you flowers too, but I read in a magazine that they suck up all the carbon monoxygen.”
- “The Bunkers is going down to Florida as pre-deranged.”
- “Here’s a last bequest: I don’t want that guy sayin’ my last urology.”
- “He’ll be coming back and back and back, like a chronicle rash.”
- “You didn’t sound colored on the phone.”
- “Honor thy parents. That’s one of the Lord’s top 10 commandments. That’s right around covetin’ your neighbor’s cattles and wives and there.”
- “Like the Good Book says, ‘Let him who is without sin be the rolling stone.'”
- “All kids are trouble, Edith. And I don’t wanna spend my reclining years trying to raise another one.”
- “This isn’t something a man usually tells a woman: I love you, Edith.”
