John Oliver Quotes

As a general rule, no one should ever be allowed to say there is no history of racial tension here, because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth.

We invented words; we'll tell you how they're supposed to sound.

I would hate to meet myself at 15.

If you’ve been here, in New York, it has been dominated by the UN General Assembly, the annual event where delegates come from all over the world to f*** up this city’s traffic.

People, I guess, generally come to see me do stand-up with a working knowledge of my broad sense of humor on The Daily Show ... I don't think anyone would mistake me as an actual anchor.

I'm British. I don't really have access to my emotions on a daily basis.

If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.

When I heard that Hitler had problems with flatulence, it's funny. What - does that make him a funny man? No. It means he had funny moments when his rear end was speaking louder than his mouth.

Having a human conversation is not something I've had any training in either as a comedian or as, you know, a human being.

The disconnect between America and its military is shocking.

You're sonically racist, Americans. You think we all sound the same, whereas I have definitely a mongrel accent.

You know that things are not going well when you lose the moral high ground to a TMZ reporter.

Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.

You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job.

I'm British, so obviously I repress any powerful emotions of any kind in relation to anything.

You just try to be true to your idea of what is funny and what is also interesting.

I think I'm just a summer fling that people will soon forget.

I find it hard in my general life to think further than the week ahead.

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.

Here in America, people come out to see what they've known you to do. In England it's like everyone comes out to tell you exactly how well they think you're doing.

I did sketch comedy, but I never did improv. So I've just tried to learn as I go.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

I don't know if there is some psychological thing of wanting to know where your doctor got his degree from before he comes into the medical room.

People in Britain see Richard Quest as a kind of an offensive cartoon character.

Everybody should care about facts. That is something all of us should agree on.

I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse.

There's never any time I think I'm a real journalist, because I don't have any of the qualifications or the intentions for that.

If you vote for Democrats, you might as well give Al Quaeda a death ray and a manual.

There is no greater anesthetic than sport.

I know I'd be an absolutely horrendous politician.

I guess the tone of jokes is often, at best, irreverent, but it always comes from a place of deep love.

I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it.

Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.

Men are all the same. They always think that something they are going to get is better than what they have got.

I care about facts the way I care about oxygen and imbibing enough water a day to live.

If your name is Sepp, at the bare minimum you’ve strangled someone in a bar fight.

Americans just don't understand dry wit.

I've made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression.

Welcome to The Daily Show, I'm John Oliver. Jon Stewart is still not here. He is currently living out a live-action Lord of the Rings role-playing experience deep in the New Zealand wilderness.

I don't think I'm identified as the anchorman, I think I'm identified as the impostor anchorman - there's a very clear line there ... I don't think it changes the way they respond.

I have a green card now, but they can take that away, yeah, they can take that away at any moment. So please don't; please let me keep it.

I wanted to be a soccer player. I knew that couldn't happen.

British people would die for their right to drink themselves to death.

I knew I was going to go into the field and make fun of people to their faces. I knew what I was getting into.

Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had.

When you do stand-up, you're just concerned with trying to leave with some semblance of human dignity at the end of your performance.

Teenagers falling off skateboards - funny. Nut shots - funny. Breaking wind - funny. The world cannot change those. Those three things are columns upon which humor is built.

By any rational metric, I am boring.

I do not want to leave in [U.S.] ... I cannot make that clear enough to immigration authorities who may be listening to this interview. I don't want to leave, so please don't make me.

Do you know how hard it is to kill 30 million people? It's a logistical nightmare.