Top 100 John Oliver Quotes
#1. I'm British. I don't really have access to my emotions on a daily basis.
John Oliver
#2. 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.
John Oliver
#3. I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy.
John Oliver
#4. The moment I accept that there's an artistic, redeeming quality in puns, I have a horrible feeling I'll get hooked.
John Oliver
#5. If you vote for Democrats, you might as well give Al Quaeda a death ray and a manual.
John Oliver
#6. We invented words; we'll tell you how they're supposed to sound.
John Oliver
#7. I do one accent - my own. I can make it louder or quieter. That is the sum total of my vocal range. I thought I could do an American accent until I tried it in front of an American - the expression of horror is still burnt onto my retinas.
John Oliver
#8. 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,
John Oliver
#9. It's pretty physically unsettling, living life on a visa.
John Oliver
#10. It really helps a comedian to be an outsider.
John Oliver
#11. 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.
John Oliver
#12. When you see people say crazy things on our show, they mean this stuff,and that's easy to forget: They're not joking.
John Oliver
#13. Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.
John Oliver
#14. Democracy is like a tamborine - not everyone can be trusted with it.
John Oliver
#15. I really love stand-up. I'm more than happy to do it for nothing. I've come to America to do it for nothing. It's the American Dream: Work for free.
John Oliver
#16. 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.
John Oliver
#17. There is so much cross-pollination between the U.S. and Britain in terms of comedians. British TV comedies work well in the U.S. American stand-ups make it big in Britain.
John Oliver
#18. I've said yes to everything that Jon Stewart has asked me to do. That's been a pretty good career decision, I think.
John Oliver
#19. Sarah Palin has been hired back by Fox News, and she only left five months ago. She has now effectively quit quitting. She can't even commit to being uncommitted.
John Oliver
#20. Sometimes it's good to remember how bad food can be, so you can enjoy the concept of flavour to the fullest.
John Oliver
#21. If your name is Sepp, at the bare minimum you've strangled someone in a bar fight.
John Oliver
#22. 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.
John Oliver
#23. I would never heckle someone. That's why I think I'm so interested in someone that would.
John Oliver
#24. I'm always interested in audience interaction. Not so much aggressive audience interaction - I'm genuinely interested in how people see things.
John Oliver
#25. I find it hard in my general life to think further than the week ahead.
John Oliver
#26. My family are from Liverpool, so I have some twang there - I have a Midlands accent, and I was raised about an hour north of London, so my voice is a mess. Although, to American ears, it sounds like the crisp language of a queen's butler.
John Oliver
#27. I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it.
John Oliver
#28. It's a great time to be doing political satire when the world is on a knife edge.
John Oliver
#29. The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.
John Oliver
#30. I realize how desperate it sounds for me, as a comedian, to ask you to laugh at my jokes.
John Oliver
#31. You don't really know when stand-up material is TV ready; it's just at what point you're willing to let it go and not work on it anymore. I'm not sure there is a point at which you think: 'And that is finished.'
John Oliver
#32. When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.
John Oliver
#33. Americans just don't understand dry wit.
John Oliver
#34. Do you know how hard it is to kill 30 million people? It's a logistical nightmare.
John Oliver
#35. The Confederate flag is one of those things that should only be seen on t-shirts, belt buckles and bumper stickers to help the rest of us identify the worst people in the world.
John Oliver
#36. Being a Mets fan is like lending someone a lot of money and you just know that you'll never get paid back.
John Oliver
#37. You're sonically racist, Americans. You think we all sound the same, whereas I have definitely a mongrel accent.
John Oliver
#38. I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.
John Oliver
#39. 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.
John Oliver
#40. I think it might honestly be time for the Sunshine State to officially change its motto to the Worst State.
John Oliver
#42. I wanted to be a soccer player. I knew that couldn't happen.
John Oliver
#43. I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse.
John Oliver
#44. 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.
John Oliver
#45. Having a human conversation is not something I've had any training in either as a comedian or as, you know, a human being.
John Oliver
#46. There are so many low points with stand-up. You are perpetually humiliated, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I don't have any dignity left to lose. An audience can't hurt you anymore when you've been completely dismantled.
John Oliver
#47. Net neutrality: The only two words that promise more boredom in the English language are 'featuring Sting,'
John Oliver
#48. Ads are baked into content like chocolate chips into a cookie. Except, it's actually more like raisins into a cookie because no one [expletive] wants them there.
John Oliver
#49. If you're asking me, would I have voted for Mitt Romney, the answer is absolutely not. Emphatically not. I cannot envision a world in which I would have voted for Mitt Romney unless I sustained a massive concussion.
John Oliver
#50. 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.
John Oliver
#51. I did sketch comedy, but I never did improv. So I've just tried to learn as I go.
John Oliver
#52. 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.
John Oliver
#53. I think being an outsider in general always helps you in comedy. I think it helps to have an outsider's eye. And so I have an outsider's voice. You know, as soon as I start talking, I don't belong here. And I think that helps in a way.
John Oliver
#54. I have occasionally - if ever I do interviews that are difficult or nerve-wracking - I take my wife's dog tags and have them in my pocket because it's a very quick way to realize that what I'm doing is not that important. It's not really worth getting stressed about because it's not, you know, war.
John Oliver
#55. Anybody who claims to be excited for April Fools' Day is probably a sociopath.
John Oliver
#56. People in Britain see Richard Quest as a kind of an offensive cartoon character.
John Oliver
#57. Attending a Sarah Palin rally was simultaneously one of the strangest and most chilling events of my life.
John Oliver
#58. Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you.
John Oliver
#59. I was definitely prepared for it to be slower, and it has not worked out that way in any shape or form. I'm grateful as a comedian, and slightly demoralized, occasionally, as a human being - those two things are always very different.
John Oliver
#60. I'm not really much of an actor, so when I started on 'The Daily Show,' I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson. Having a British accent definitely gave me a sonic leg up on that because there is a faux authority to the British accent in and of itself.
John Oliver
#61. Southern people are bigger-hearted and kinder than I had any right to expect.
John Oliver
#62. Politicians don't really bring up religion in England.
John Oliver
#63. There are some people who watch NASCAR for the highly skilled driving - but most people watch it for the crashes.
John Oliver
#64. In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don't really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face.
John Oliver
#65. I watch one news channel until my soul can't take it anymore. It's the background of my life.
John Oliver
#66. I feel more at home knowing I'm not really at home. It takes all the pressure off you trying to fit in!
John Oliver
#67. People are friendlier in New York than London.
John Oliver
#68. Whatever the occasion, [the Queen] has a face which demonstrably says 'I don't give a royal s**t.'
John Oliver
#69. Congratulations, Congress! 77% disapproval rating! You may be about to become the English language's most offensive C-word.
John Oliver
#70. Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.
John Oliver
#71. The German language is so sonorous, isn't it? Beautiful language ... the language of poetry. Angry, angry poetry.
John Oliver
#72. People are always going to say stupid things, and you're always going to be able to make jokes about that, but it should be the last thing you add in, because it's the easiest thing.
John Oliver
#73. Most stand-ups, once they have done it, think of it as their default job. I'm pretty sure Jon Stewart still feels that way now. You are a stand-up first; other things come and go.
John Oliver
#74. I guess the tone of jokes is often, at best, irreverent, but it always comes from a place of deep love.
John Oliver
#75. Politics has become infused with narcissism in America.
John Oliver
#76. I get nostalgic for British negativity. There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers. When you go back to Britain, everybody is just running everything down. It's like whatever the opposite of a hug is.
John Oliver
#77. British people would die for their right to drink themselves to death
John Oliver
#78. 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.
John Oliver
#79. People really have come for a dialogue when they go to a stand-up show in the U.K. They say, 'I understand that you have now finished your little comedy monologue; now I have something to say regarding what I've just heard.
John Oliver
#80. If I wanted to take a more activist or journalistic slant in work, I should probably just go be an activist or a journalist. But I'm happy being a comedian.
John Oliver
#81. 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.
John Oliver
#82. It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them.
John Oliver
#83. Drumpf is like a Magic 8-Ball. Every time you shake him, he gives you a different answer.
John Oliver
#84. I can't relax. I find vacations problematic.
John Oliver
#85. Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had.
John Oliver
#86. A Southern accent is not a club in my bag.
John Oliver
#87. If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing. That's generally how we speak to each other: you communicate the information between the lines of insulting sentences.
John Oliver
#88. There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers.
John Oliver
#89. One thing that America is objectively exceptional at is overreacting whenever anyone accuses them of not being exceptional.
John Oliver
#90. Once you learn how to make people laugh, then you get to choose exactly how you want to make them laugh.
John Oliver
#91. We in Britain stopped evolving gastronomically with the advent of the pie. Everything beyond that seemed like a brave, frightening new world. We knew the French were up to something across the Channel, but we didn't want anything to do with it.
John Oliver
#92. You just try to be true to your idea of what is funny and what is also interesting.
John Oliver
#93. I think Americans still can't help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That's why so many infomercials have British people.
John Oliver
#94. Pumpkin spice lattes are egg nog for morning people.
John Oliver
#95. Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.
John Oliver
#96. My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American.
John Oliver
#97. 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.
John Oliver
#98. It's exciting to have a role in anything that's Claymation, just because you're always intrigued by what a clay wizard version of yourself would be.
John Oliver
#99. Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it.
John Oliver
#100. As any Brit will understand, things get a little easier when you don't have to be number one any more. Really, the fall of an empire is not as bad as everyone thinks. It's like retirement. People fear retirement, but it can turn out be rather pleasant.
John Oliver
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