Best Stand Up Comedians Quotes

#1. I started doing stand-up at the age of 20. This was back in 1976, around the time (coincidence?) that the first comedy clubs were starting. The young comedians of today gasp when I tell them how many shows I did that first year: 500. Five nights a week.

Emo Philips

#2. As far as stand-ups go, I always loved Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, and Sinbad. Basically, I love black comedians because they're the funniest. I wish I were a black comedian, actually.

Adam DeVine

#3. I was influenced by a lot of stand-up comedians ... Eddie Murphy back when he was doing 'Raw.' I watched that so many times as a kid, I can probably still quote the entire thing to this day. Chris Rock. Dave Chappelle. George Carlin. A lot of the guys who were sort of edgy for their time.

Ray William Johnson

#4. When I used to watch comedians with my dad, he laid it all out for me. He wanted to be a comedian himself, and he was so funny. We'd watch stand-up on TV, and he'd tell me the subtext of what they were saying.

Roseanne Barr

#5. A lot of stand-up comedians are actually very insecure, and they come on slightly battling the audience. They want to be the superior person in the room, sneering at the world. That can be very funny. But to me, what's more interesting is that the world is on my shoulders, and it's pushing me down.

Stephen Merchant

#6. Coming from the Midwest, I didn't know about stand-up as an art. I just thought stand-up comedians were old men in suits talking about their wives.

Natasha Leggero

#7. I am trying to work out what my taste is, comedy-wise. I look up to stand up comedians who appear to be telling the truth, but I don't mind if they are lying.

Jessie Cave

#8. I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.

Chuck Palahniuk

#9. Even though I do a more traditional type of being funny on television, I still know a lot of comedians and stand-ups and improv actors.

Busy Philipps

#10. I've been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled.

Wendy Liebman

#11. To me, comedians are the last great storytellers because they depict their stories and create their effect with so few words. In the span of a couple minutes, stand-up comics can communicate more emotion than most novels do in hours worth of reading.

Chuck Palahniuk

#12. I love stand-up comedians. I really do.

Jim Gaffigan

#13. The really good stand up comedians can be angry but relatable, and they have interestingly humanizing personalities. Their observational skills are far greater than mine, so I'll just stick to reading lines off a page.

Kunal Nayyar

#14. Laughter is good for you. Nine out of ten stand-up comedians recommend laughter in the face of intense stupidity.

Jim Butcher

#15. I'd been acting and doing stand-up in New York about eight years, getting rejected, and I finally got the opportunity to do stand-up on Letterman, which holds even more importance for me. With comedians, that's definitely the pinnacle, but being from Indiana, it was a big to-do.

Jim Gaffigan

#16. There's comedians who I consider extremely punk rock who I've seen do very political stand up in places where nobody wants to hear that. It's uncomfortable and scary and you realize it's the punkest performance you've ever witnessed.

Kathleen Hanna

#17. It's also that comedians don't have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They're writers who perform their own material. It's more interesting. And they're sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.

Rachel Weisz

#18. Why are we casting all these stand-up comedians to do 'Breaking Bad,' one of the most dramatic TV shows ever?

Steven Michael Quezada

#19. I hate stand-up comics; I think funny is something you are, not something you desperately try to be in front of a roomful of obnoxious people.

Peter Cameron

#20. I was always the class clown; I made my family laugh, and that was when I was always happiest. I grew up listening to stand-up comedians' albums and watching them on TV, on 'The Tonight Show' and Letterman.

Sarah Silverman

#21. Canadian comedians are generally more well-rounded ... They have to do a lot more. In order to have a career in this country, you have to do everything. And in the States you can narrow-cast, you can be just a sitcom performer or a stand-up comedian or a sketch performer.

Scott Thompson

#22. You are not any different. You can do anything you want. So many times, I've been asked what I think of women stand-ups. If you actually look around, there are so many female comedians starring in the biggest TV shows.

Lilly Singh

#23. It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.

Harvey Pekar

#24. I don't like comedians who don't have conviction, and with stand-up, it is always best to have an angle.

Jack Whitehall

#25. My heroes - people like Woody Allen - were stand-up comedians. Therefore, I always felt I should give it a go.

Stephen Merchant

#26. 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

#27. Stand-up comedians say that anyone in the audience can be funny, but people paid to see us because we're just a little bit funnier. In the same way, I think anybody can play music - in fact, I think everyone has music in them, but some of us can do it a little better.

J. D. Souther

#28. When they meet a stand-up comic, people sometimes remark: 'That must be the hardest job in the world.' Among comedians, only Freddie Starr is not embarrassed and slightly appalled by this remark.

Arthur Smith

#29. You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from 'Star Search' or 'Survivor' or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.

Steve Zahn

#30. No small part of the club's audience consisted of would-be comics, as well as the leading comics of the day. In fact, there were so many gagsters around that it was difficult to know who was part of the act and who was just sitting in.

Kliph Nesteroff

#31. I just want to kind of tackle every kind of form that exists in the comedy world; whether it be stand-up or hidden camera or parody. Kind of slap it in a movie with hip-hop artists and actors, comedians and girls. I just want to do something fun.

Pauly Shore

#32. I don't consider myself a stand-up comedian. I consider myself a performer; a comic as opposed to stand-up comedian. Stand-up comedians stand there and do their bits; I break every rule in creation. If there's a rule that can be broken in stand-up, I'll do it.

J. B. Smoove