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Who really said it

There are four hundred thousand words in the English language, and there are seven you can't say on television

Spoken by George Carlin 1937–2008 · American stand-up comedian & social critic
Verified In copyright

Carlin states it early in “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” the closing track of his album Class Clown, recorded live at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on 27 May 1972 and released that September. Wikiquote’s sourced section ↗ prints this exact wording under Class Clown (1972), cited to that recording, and follows it with the ratio — “399,993 to 7.”

Last verified 3 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“There are four hundred thousand words in the English language, and there are seven you can't say on television” George Carlin, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," on Class Clown, recorded 27 May 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (Little David/Atlantic, released 29 September 1972). Wording per Wikiquote's sourced Class Clown entry, cited there to the recording; transcripts of the delivered line vary slightly.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Estate of George Carlin; recording first released by Little David Records / Atlantic Records). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of George Carlin — American stand-up comedian, social critic & author. Theme: "There are four hundred thousand words in the English language, and there are seven you can't say on television". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "There are four hundred thousand words in the English language, and there are seven you can't say on television". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The record

Routine
“Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”
Album
Class Clown
Recorded
27 May 1972 — Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, California
Released
29 September 1972 — Little David / Atlantic Records

Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them that you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! Class Clown, 1972

That is how a widely circulated fan transcript of the routine renders the line. Transcriptions of the delivered audio differ: Wikiquote’s sourced Class Clown section ↗, citing the 27 May 1972 recording, prints the shorter “seven you can’t say on television,” and other renderings sit in between. We have not audited the tape ourselves, so we quote Wikiquote’s recording-cited wording as the canonical form and treat the rest as approximate. Same joke, same routine either way.

Wikiquote: George Carlin, sourced quotes from Class Clown (1972)

How we checked

  • Wikiquote’s George Carlin page ↗ prints the line among its sourced quotes under the heading “Class Clown (1972),” with a citation to the recording of 27 May 1972 — not in its Misattributed section.
  • A widely circulated fan transcript of the routine ↗ renders it “there are 7 of them that you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is!” with the follow-up “399,993 to 7.” It is not an authority on which take it transcribes — it mislabels the performance as the WBAI broadcast — so we defer to Wikiquote’s recording-cited wording for the quotation itself.
  • Wikipedia’s entry on Class Clown ↗ confirms the album was recorded 27 May 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, released 29 September 1972 on Little David / Atlantic, and closes side two with the seven-words routine.
  • The 1973 rewrite is a different text: the transcript appended to FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 ↗ — the “Filthy Words” monologue broadcast by WBAI — opens “Aruba-du, ruba-tu, ruba-tu” and contains no sentence about the number of words in the English language.
In copyright

Class Clown was released on 29 September 1972, so both the routine and the recording sit well inside US copyright — nothing here is public domain. The sentence is reproduced above as a short citation for attribution purposes; the routine itself remains the property of Carlin’s estate and its licensees.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people get wrong

The authorship is not in doubt — this one really is Carlin. What goes wrong is the source: the line gets filed under the Supreme Court case and under the wrong album — and transcripts of the delivered wording do not quite agree with one another.

FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (1978) mis-sourced

The routine that reached the Supreme Court was “Filthy Words” from Occupation: Foole (1973), broadcast by WBAI on 30 October 1973 — as Wikipedia’s account of the case sets out ↗. The verbatim transcript appended to the Court’s opinion ↗ does not contain this sentence at all. Quoting the line and citing the case cites the wrong performance.

The exact delivered words transcriptions vary

Nobody quoting this is misattributing it, but no two transcripts of the routine agree word for word. Wikiquote’s sourced entry ↗, cited to the 27 May 1972 recording, prints “seven you can’t say on television”; a circulating fan transcript ↗ has “7 of them that you can’t say”; other renderings drop the “that.” We have not audited the audio, so treat any word-for-word version as approximate. The substance is not in dispute.

Lenny Bruce not the author

Carlin’s list has an ancestor: in a 1966 performance Bruce said he had been arrested over nine words, a routine documented alongside Carlin’s ↗. That is a precursor to the list, not to this sentence — the four-hundred-thousand framing is Carlin’s.

George Carlin, generally magnet

Carlin is one of the internet’s most reliable false-attribution magnets — Wikiquote’s Misattributed section ↗ strips out “The Paradox of Our Time” (written by Bob Moorehead), “I Am a Bad American,” and a drift of 1990s email one-liners. This line is not one of them; it sits in the sourced column.

It is Carlin’s, and it is precisely locatable: the opening of “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” on Class Clown, recorded 27 May 1972 ↗ — the album before the version that made it to court.

Context

Why it mattered

The sentence is doing structural work, not just being funny. By opening with a ratio — four hundred thousand against seven — Carlin reframed censorship as an arithmetic absurdity before he had named a single word. The argument is finished in the first line; everything after it is elaboration.

The framing outlived the joke. When a Pacifica station aired the 1973 rewrite, “Filthy Words,” on 30 October 1973, the resulting complaint became FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, decided 5–4 on 3 July 1978 — the case that gave American broadcast regulators their indecency authority. Carlin later said he took a perverse pride in ending up a footnote in judicial history.

399,993 to 7. They must really be bad.

The two versions, and why the difference matters

1972 — “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” Class Clown. Recorded 27 May 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium; released 29 September 1972 on Little David / Atlantic. This is the version that contains the four-hundred-thousand line.

1973 — “Filthy Words,” Occupation: Foole. A reworking of the same material. This is the one WBAI broadcast on 30 October 1973 and the one transcribed in full as an appendix to the Supreme Court’s opinion. Its text differs throughout — it opens “Aruba-du, ruba-tu, ruba-tu” — and the ratio line is absent from it entirely.

Because the second version is the one preserved in a court record, it is the easiest to find and the easiest to cite — which is exactly how a line from the first album ends up footnoted to the second.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

George Carlin — sourced quotesen.wikiquote.org

Prints this line under “Class Clown (1972)” in the sourced section, cited to the 27 May 1972 recording; its Misattributed section lists what is falsely credited to Carlin.
George Carlin quote investigationsquoteinvestigator.com

QI’s Carlin index — no entry for this line (there is no dispute to resolve), but it traces several others credited to him, including “Never argue with stupid people.”
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978)law.cornell.edu

The full opinion with the verbatim “Filthy Words” transcript appended — useful precisely because this sentence is not in it.
Class Clown (album)en.wikipedia.org

Recording date and venue, the 29 September 1972 release on Little David / Atlantic, and the routine’s place as the closing track.
Seven dirty wordsen.wikipedia.org

The 1972 routine, the 1973 “Filthy Words” rewrite, the WBAI broadcast, and Lenny Bruce’s earlier nine-word bit.
Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television — transcriptscrapsfromtheloft.com

Unofficial fan transcript of the routine, with one rendering of the delivered line and the “399,993 to 7” follow-up. It mislabels the performance as the WBAI broadcast, so treat its wording as one transcription among several.

The author

Who was George Carlin?

George Carlin

1937–2008 · American stand-up comedian, social critic & author

Born in New York City on 12 May 1937, Carlin spent five decades turning language itself into his subject — the euphemisms, the taboos, the words institutions decide you may not use. Class Clown (1972) consolidated the shift from clean-cut TV comic to counterculture voice that FM & AM had announced that January, and it is the album that set him on the way to fourteen HBO specials. His seven-words routine put him at the centre of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, the 1978 Supreme Court case that still shapes American broadcast indecency rules. He died in Santa Monica on 22 June 2008.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this page

George Carlin, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” on Class Clown, recorded 27 May 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (Little David / Atlantic, released 29 September 1972). Wording as printed in the sourced Class Clown section of Wikiquote’s George Carlin page, cited there to the recording; circulating transcripts of the routine render the delivered line variously, e.g. “there are 7 of them that you can’t say on television.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There are four hundred thousand words in the English language, and there are seven you can't say on television’?” Last verified 3 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-are-four-hundred-thousand-words-in-the-english/

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