"It was rebellious on a sort of profound level and it also had a kind of jubilance to it," says Tony Hendra, one of Carlin's closest friends and author of Last Words, the New York Times-bestselling "sortabiography" on Carlin. "For him, that's what the piece meant. I think for others in the larger community of comedians who were trying to be themselves and trying to be more relevant, it was definitely a kind of brilliantly funny, brilliantly daring piece in its time." Hendra adds: "It was pretty clear he was the first person to say these things on a public stage since Lenny."

The consequences mattered little to Carlin, a tireless student of language. The words he used in the monologue were part of his natural manner of speech from growing up in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York. Throughout the bit, the gritty contrarian chided the idea that the seven words would "infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war." The routine would lift the album to cult-classic status. It still resonates today, maintaining a perfect five-star rating among iTunes customers.

"The bit had such a good rhythm to it," Patrick Carlin, George's brother, says. "It was just beautiful. It was a perfect, perfect thing and offensive all the way. It showed the stupidity of picking seven words out of thousands and how they can't be said."

To George Carlin, the routine's driving force and message weren't in the ideas behind the seven words, but rather the words themselves. For the first time, someone was doing a convincing enough job of cajoling an audience into thinking that these words weren't really so tasteless after all.

"He kind of took the door that Bruce opened and basically put a door-jam in it," says comedian Lewis Black, who cites Carlin as one of his prime influences. "[Profanity] allows comedy to go further. For me, he provided a comfort zone."

Forty years and a landmark Supreme Court decision have passed since Carlin first spoke out about the seven words you cannot say on television. But we're still wrestling with the issues that Carlin raised with his monologue. How should the government define acceptable language? What can we learn from the 40th anniversary of the most famous, foul-mouthed comedic routine shortly before what could be the most substantial Supreme Court decision on profanity to date?

"I wouldn't have changed anything I did if I had known there were children in the audience," Carlin said in the 2007 documentary, Summerfest Stories. In July 1972, Carlin was arrested on obscenity charges after performing "Seven Dirty Words" at Milwaukee's Summerfest, a scene that mirrored what happened with Bruce in Chicago ten years earlier. It was one of several times Carlin was arrested on such charges because of the routine. "I think children need to hear those words the most because as yet they don't have the hang-ups. It's adults who are locked into certain thought patterns."