Stephen Colbert Quotes & Sayings

#1. I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.

Stephen Colbert

#2. I have a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College in Illinois. All I did was give a speech, and now everybody has to call me Dr. Colbert.

Stephen Colbert

#3. Never throw caution to the wind. It could whip back into your eyes and blind you.

Stephen Colbert

#4. If Jesus doesn't have a sense of humor, I am in huge trouble.

Stephen Colbert

#5. Cain understands domestic issues because he had experience selling pizza; and he understands international issues because pizza is Italian.

Stephen Colbert

#6. Ignorance is bliss-Oedipus ruined a great sex life by asking too many questions.

Stephen Colbert

#7. We all deserve credit for this new surveillance state that we live in because we the people voted for the Patriot Act. Democrats and Republicans alike ... We voted for the people who voted for it, and then voted for the people who reauthorized it, then voted for the people who re-re-authorize d it.

Stephen Colbert

#8. Summer movie idea: take all the sequels that are out right now, and make movies about their backstories.

Stephen Colbert

#9. If Obama can force you to get health insurance just by calling it a tax, than there is nothing to stop him from making you gay marry an illegal immigrant wearing a condom on a hydroponic pot farm powered by solar energy.

Stephen Colbert

#10. Yes, Dr. King is pro-gun just as surely as Jesus would be pro-nails.

Stephen Colbert

#11. Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche.

Stephen Colbert

#12. I have a generally liberal audience, but they will applaud when I nail a liberal lion.

Stephen Colbert

#13. Yes, helping the poor helps keep them stuck in poverty. As Jesus said, 'Tough love thy neighbor as thyself, get your own loaves and fishes.'
Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert

#14. (Rush are) like the JD Salinger of Canadian Prog Rock

Stephen Colbert

#15. Don't be afraid to make things up. Never fear being exposed as a fraud. Experts make things up all the time. They're qualified to.

Stephen Colbert

#16. Well China, you got us. Phelps was doping - and he still beat you. He smoked the sticky-icky, and then he smoked your ass!

Stephen Colbert

#17. I deliver my Truth hot and hard.

Stephen Colbert

#18. I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin. If that ever happens, it's only because something happened during the interview that got me going, and then I had to translate my feelings to the mouth of the character.

Stephen Colbert

#19. This is America. We must defend the principles symbolized by Lady Liberty - unless she's on the pill, in which case, she is a giant green tramp.

Stephen Colbert

#20. I'll make fun of anybody. We're all about falling down and going boom on camera.

Stephen Colbert

#21. 'Sympathy for the Devil' is just another way of saying 'Compassionate Conservative'.

Stephen Colbert

#22. An apple a day keeps anyone away, if you throw it hard enough.

Stephen Colbert

#23. Truthiness is what you want the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support.

Stephen Colbert

#24. To sit here at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush ... I feel like I'm dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You now what, I'm a pretty sound sleeper, that may not be enough ... Somebody shoot me in the face.

Stephen Colbert

#25. I love making observations. That one is a classic example.

Stephen Colbert

#26. With Late Night Show I can begin the search for the real Stephen Colbert.I just hope I don't find him on Ashley Madison.

Stephen Colbert

#27. At every moment, we are volunteers.

Stephen Colbert

#28. The worst thing about affirmative action is that it encourages reverse discrimination, so-called because it goes in the opposite way of how we naturally discriminate.

Stephen Colbert

#29. There's a buzz to failing and not dying.

Stephen Colbert

#30. When meeting royalty, it is very important, no matter how excited you are, not to vomit on them. Instead, vomit on the nearest commoner.

Stephen Colbert

#31. I've said it before: equations are the devil's sentences. The worst one is that quadratic equation, an infernal salad of numbers, letters, and symbols.

Stephen Colbert

#32. You seem cynical because you're always talking about that selfish behavior that's dressed up as altruism. It doesn't mean there isn't altruism. It just means that it's harder to make jokes about altruism.

Stephen Colbert

#33. Sure, integrating schools may sound benign. But whats the use of living in a gated community if my kids go to school and get poor all over them?

Stephen Colbert

#34. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them because police officers call me 'sir'.

Stephen Colbert

#35. Contraception leads to more babies being born out of wedlock, like fire extinguishers lead to more fires.

Stephen Colbert

#36. I don't like books, they're all fact, no heart.

Stephen Colbert

#37. When my car runs out of gas, I buy a new one. I don't want to ride around in a quitter.

Stephen Colbert

#38. Look, I've got nothing against brains. Some of my best friends have them.

Stephen Colbert

#39. Asia: Four little letters, three billion little people.

Stephen Colbert

#40. Nothing is more vintage than dying of Rubella.

Stephen Colbert

#41. Don't cry over spilled milk. By this time tomorrow, it'll be free yogurt.

Stephen Colbert

#42. I teach Sunday school, motherf*****.

Stephen Colbert

#43. Oops! I always thought PETA stood for Please Eat This Animal.

Stephen Colbert

#44. The only thing that keeps us going back to one another is that we're all filled with such enormous self-doubt. We have doubts about our ability to be alone, to self-actualize.

Stephen Colbert

#45. It's back to school time. or as home-schoolers call it, stay-where-you-are time.

Stephen Colbert

#46. Gravitas is the soup bone in the stew of television news.

Stephen Colbert

#47. Everybody loves dogs. They're the pizza of the animal kingdom.

Stephen Colbert

#48. First, [in high school], I smoked a lot of pot ... and that's how I got to know the people 'half in' the society of my high school and we waved at each other over the bong. Then I got to know people by making jokes.

Stephen Colbert

#49. We are thrilled that Jon Batiste is joining 'The Late Show' family of products. For my money, nobody plays like Jon Batiste. And you can trust me, because it is my money.

Stephen Colbert

#50. If you are a hermaphrodite, it is physically impossible to be gay.

Stephen Colbert

#51. If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

Stephen Colbert

#52. A new study shows that having a severe phobia can hasten aging. But what if my greatest fear IS aging?!?

Stephen Colbert

#53. Global warming isn't real because I was cold today! Also great news: world hunger is over because I just ate.

Stephen Colbert

#54. It's hard to swallow your pride. That's why I slather mine in mayonnaise.

Stephen Colbert

#55. To all the worryworts out there who said super PACs were going to lead to a cabal of billionaires secretly buying democracy: wrong! They are publicly buying democracy.

Stephen Colbert

#56. I started as a straight actor. I'd go onstage, and I'd think, 'Wow, this is the only thing I want to work really hard at. I will rehearse fifty times on a single scene; I don't care - I'll do it again.'

Stephen Colbert

#57. Can accidentally eating halal food make you Muslim? Yes, the same way drinking a cosmo can make you gay.

Stephen Colbert

#58. As we all know, reality has a liberal bias.

Stephen Colbert

#59. After nearly 15 minutes of soul searching, I have heard the call. Nation, I will seek the office of the president of the United States. I am doing it!

Stephen Colbert

#60. Democrats lead in all the polls by at least ten points, except one.. Fox News. That is with a margin of error of plus or minus the facts.

Stephen Colbert

#61. The first time I met Jon Stewart was at the press conference that Comedy Central held to announce Jon would be the new host of 'The Daily Show,' which back then was not called 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.'

Stephen Colbert

#62. Maybe he'll be different from who he was and always is.

Stephen Colbert

#63. The Crusaders lead to the Knights Templar; the Knights Templar lead to the Masons; and the Masons lead to the Shriners, a secret society that controls world government, toys with our banking system, and single-handedly keeps the fez industry afloat.

Stephen Colbert

#64. You don't want to just do a joke because it works - we can make a lot of jokes work - you want to do a joke because it will hopefully build into an argument.

Stephen Colbert

#65. Like O'Rielly, we'll grab the most important word of each sentence ... 'The' for example. Also, I'll say, 'I'm angry,' and the graphic will read, 'Colbert angry.

Stephen Colbert

#66. Last night was Super Tuesday - a 10-state GOP Primary orgy. A big, sweaty pile of lever-yankin Republican voters. And like most orgies, it involves a bunch of middle aged guys who are not appealing to women.

Stephen Colbert

#67. Why would we go to war on women? They don't have any oil.

Stephen Colbert

#68. Apply Truth liberally to the inflamed area.

Stephen Colbert

#69. You don't look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut.

Stephen Colbert

#70. And of course I don't go anywhere without my pet goldfish, Anthrax. I always tell security I'm carrying Anthrax. Yeah, sure I get a lot of guff about it, but it's a family name; I'm not changing it.

Stephen Colbert

#71. Atheism, a religion dedicated to its own sense of smug superiority.

Stephen Colbert

#72. Clearly, America has no shortage of metaphorical opportunities for the poor.

Stephen Colbert

#73. What's the worst that can happen? A tidal wave? Glaciers with guns?

Stephen Colbert

#74. Unlike Paul Newman, who seems to think that salad dressing is the cure-all for America's ills, I'm a man of action.

Stephen Colbert

#75. Some say, 'Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.' I say, 'Those who ignore history are in for a big surprise.'

Stephen Colbert

#76. I could sit toe to toe at a potato table with anybody.

Stephen Colbert

#77. If we don't cut expensive things like Head Start, child nutrition programs, and teachers, what sort of future are we leaving for our children?

Stephen Colbert

#78. Destroying a religious symbol and building a religious center are really the same thing if you don't think about it.

Stephen Colbert

#79. I believe that people, more often than not, act with the best possible intentions. And when they don't, that's funny to me. That's why comedy ends up seeming cynical, because you're talking about the gap between what people say and what they do.

Stephen Colbert

#80. There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good.

Stephen Colbert

#81. In the beginning, a monkey evolutioned gay marriage.

Stephen Colbert

#82. Foreign newspapers: if they've got nothing to hide, how come they don't print them in English?

Stephen Colbert

#83. I'm not a fan of the facts. Facts change; my opinion never does.

Stephen Colbert

#84. It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.

Stephen Colbert

#85. Who would have thought that a means of communication limited to 140 characters would ever create misunderstanding.

Stephen Colbert

#86. I've said it a million times: Romance languages lead to premarital sex.

Stephen Colbert

#87. I'm very comfortable with uncomfortable situations, and I think that can seem odd to people, that I like the thrill of discomfort.

Stephen Colbert

#88. Can't wait for tomorrow when I get to exercise my patriotic duty as an American: Complaining about how long it's taking to VOTE.

Stephen Colbert

#89. No matter how you were born, no matter how you identify, I want to be clear that I would be proud to grind you up and eat you.

Stephen Colbert

#90. They think I'm silly. I do silly things. I fall down and run into things. I talk to inanimate objects. I'll hold a pickup stick to my ear and say, What? What's that? I can't hear you

Stephen Colbert

#91. It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.

Stephen Colbert

#92. I don't actually believe that the present social norm is some sort of eternal truth.

Stephen Colbert

#93. The pistachio: it's just like our politics. When the two sides are divided, that's when the nuts come out.

Stephen Colbert

#94. Will Herman Cain become the first black President that I acknowledge? I call him a dark horse because he's an unlikely candidate who surged forward, and not because he's a horse.

Stephen Colbert