Top 100 Chris Hardwick Quotes
#1. You don't have to believe everything you think."
- Chris Hardwick, "The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life)
Chris Hardwick
#2. On 'Sanjay and Craig,' I've had a number of chances to work with Chris Hardwick, and that is so much fun.
Maulik Pancholy
#3. In the '90s, you couldn't say the word 'nerd' to someone when pitching a show. They would have considered that too niche and wouldn't have listened.
Chris Hardwick
#4. Bowling is all physics and energy distribution. It's F = ma. So it is actually one of the most science-y sports, because it literally is just a ball and a surface and objects to knock down.
Chris Hardwick
#5. Twitter is really a hyper-distilled version of how the internet should work - short bursts of relatively useful information.
Chris Hardwick
#6. With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes.
Chris Hardwick
#7. Comment threads are the new therapy for people. They just go and post the worst things they can think of because they feel bad, and then other people start attacking them, and then they attack back.
Chris Hardwick
#8. There's no ironic appreciation of things we love, even of things that are in fact ridiculous, which a hipster might take and own and show the world the humor in it.
Chris Hardwick
#9. Even before I had an assistant, my calendar was color-coded and I had all these different e-mail rules for how to prioritize e-mails, so I made it a point years ago to figure all that stuff out because my life was a mess.
Chris Hardwick
#10. I'm fascinated by people's process. Everyone's process is a little bit different, and just to see the different paths that people take to get where they are is really interesting to me.
Chris Hardwick
#11. I think doing the podcast may have been one of the best career decisions I've ever made in my life.
Chris Hardwick
#12. There's something about shooting webs out of my wrists and climbing up things that just makes me happy.
Chris Hardwick
#14. Stand-up isn't something I just sit down and start writing - it's ideas you come up with in the shower, while you're driving, waiting in line.
Chris Hardwick
#15. We're not in an information age anymore. We're in the information management age.
Chris Hardwick
#16. Do you think Patrick Swayze now goes up behind people in pottery classes and hugs them just to crack up other ghosts?
Chris Hardwick
#17. I am a freelancer. My services are available to anyone at any time.
Chris Hardwick
#18. No matter what tricks you use or what decisions you make, go easy on yourself as someone who's on a never-ending quest for improvement.
Chris Hardwick
#19. Every time I finish a record, it's sort of feels like, "I can't believe that I'm hanging out and having a conversation, and people are gonna listen to this." It's an odd thing, but it's really cool.
Chris Hardwick
#20. I have opinions about the differences between Memphis barbecue and Texas barbecue. Put me in the kitchen and you'll see how Southern I can be.
Chris Hardwick
#21. Every year on my birthday, I start a new playlist titled after my current age so I can keep track of my favorite songs of the year as a sort of musical diary because I am a teenage girl.
Chris Hardwick
#22. When you hang around a lot of comedians long enough, you realize there's a certain gene, in every comedian. It's why we get hyper-analytical about things.
Chris Hardwick
#23. When you look at your freelance career, it's really like a mall. And if you look at a mall, it's a self-contained system that has a flow and logic to it. You'll probably have one or two really bigger jobs, those are like your anchor stores.
Chris Hardwick
#24. Sober strip clubs are horrible. When you are sober you see the matrix code behind a strip club. You're paying girls to pretend to like you until you run out of money so they can walk away.
Chris Hardwick
#25. I categorize nerds as creative-obsessive. A lot of nerds are creative people who obsess almost unnaturally over the minutiae of things.
Chris Hardwick
#26. If you can build your career around your passions, then you're winning in life; that's one of the best things you can ask for.
Chris Hardwick
#27. Humans cannot produce viable offspring with our closest animal cousin: the chimpanzee. We cannot impregnate a chimp. So you know what that means? No condoms.
Chris Hardwick
#28. Bowling really was a big American sport in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, and then it kind of died off in the '80s.
Chris Hardwick
#29. Trying to make strangers laugh is crazy and more than a little narcissistic.
Chris Hardwick
#30. Steal moments of happiness if you have to, and then collect them until they are the dominant images in your psyche.
Chris Hardwick
#31. Nerds get caught up in minutiae, because there is a tremendous and fulfilling sense of control in understanding every single detail of a thing more than any other living creature.
Chris Hardwick
#32. There's a lot of laughing on a horror movie set. They're magical in that way.
Chris Hardwick
#33. It changed my whole outlook. I lost a decade to self-pity, and the next thing I knew I was turning 40.
Chris Hardwick
#34. There are certain parts of a classic nerd's brain that can destroy that person - obsessing about things to the detriment of everything else in your life. But those are the same tools that you can use to turn everything around.
Chris Hardwick
#35. One of the many reasons why I love stand-up so much is when you're performing, you get instant feedback. You know if stuff is working right away.
Chris Hardwick
#36. I think when I look out and I see there's so much negativity in the world and a lot of people are unhappy and a lot people are anxious, it just feels like that's one view of the world. But you don't have to always focus on that view of the world.
Chris Hardwick
#37. American television constantly tries to co-op British comedy and create their own version of it. Most of the time it doesn't work; obviously, in the case of 'The Office,' it did. But a lot of times, it doesn't really work.
Chris Hardwick
#38. My mom is a big sports fans. Basketball, football, baseball, whatever. She calls into sports radio shows and gets into shouting matches, that's how intense she is about it.
Chris Hardwick
#39. I think for a lot of people, bowling is sort of a joke. But I love it, and it means a lot to me, so any chance to help promote it or celebrate it or not make the hackiest jokes - 'Bowlers are like plumbers and they wear the craziest shirts!' - I'm way into.
Chris Hardwick
#40. The idea of the archetypal nerd is totally blurred these days. So many people of this current generation have grown up with technology and video games. It's just a part of the world now, a part of our shared culture.
Chris Hardwick
#41. Real philosophy is like trying to read an alarm system installation manual in Korean.
Chris Hardwick
#42. Our mandate at Nerdist is that we only get involved with nice people around things that we love. We have the luxury of being in the demographic that we're programming for.
Chris Hardwick
#43. You walk into a strip club with a wad of cash; they all flock around you. Strippers are just pigeons with tits. They go where the bread is.
Chris Hardwick
#44. We didn't understand irony yet in the '80s; we just kind of existed at face value, so there was no nerd cool yet because the digital revolution was still in its infancy.
Chris Hardwick
#45. I do lots of crowd work in my set, because I enjoy writing material through riffing and conversation.
Chris Hardwick
#46. I honestly think hipsters eat with their assholes because they consume everything wrong.
Chris Hardwick
#47. When I was growing up, I was as socially outcast as any nerd could possibly be. I was in the chess club, I brought D&D stuff to school, I had every game system you could imagine, I spent countless hours at arcades, computer camp, loud presence in the Latin Club. All that stuff.
Chris Hardwick
#48. Stand up straight. If you stand up straight, you will instantly feel better about yourself, and you will project a better image to the world, one that says you don't feel like you have to be hunched over and closed off.
Chris Hardwick
#49. When you first start working, you take whatever job is offered, because you have to build your resume. But you don't think about what you're building.
Chris Hardwick
#50. No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who's ALWAYS had EVERYTHING work out for them with ZERO struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don't exist.
Chris Hardwick
#51. Both my parents recognized early on that I wanted to do something in comedy, and they were really supportive. They're the ones who bought me Steve Martin records and let me watch R-rated comedies long before they probably should have.
Chris Hardwick
#52. My father was one of the greatest professional bowlers of all time. Seriously. Billy Hardwick: PBA Hall of Fame, Player of the Year in '63 and '69, and the first winner of the triple crown of bowling, among other things.
Chris Hardwick
#53. For me personally, I have a fear of, 'If I stop, I'm going to die.' If I stop doing the things that are enriching to me or creatively exciting to me or if I stop creating, then I feel stagnant. If something isn't growing, it's dying.
Chris Hardwick
#54. It's so much easier to give advice than to take it.
Chris Hardwick
#55. I don't know if I'm a Twitter addict. That seems kind of harsh. I would say it's more that I'm seriously involved. That it's a long-term relationship - like a girlfriend, which my actual girlfriend loves to hear.
Chris Hardwick
#56. You don't need 30 million people to listen to your podcast. If 10,000 people listen to your podcast, which is not a hard number to achieve, then 10,000 people are listening, and you can build a community, and literally change the world just recording into a microphone.
Chris Hardwick
#57. If you do a joke that's really old, then what happens is people on Reddit and Twitter just go, 'Real original, you're just doing old jokes!' But bands do it all the time.
Chris Hardwick
#58. The difference being that a nerd would wear a D&D shirt because he loves D&D while a hipster would wear a D&D shirt because it's ridiculous that he is wearing a D&D shirt.
Chris Hardwick
#60. Traditionally nerd-based culture is now a big sector of pop culture.
Chris Hardwick
#61. Freelancers are 'free' because they take risks - they don't like being told what to do. That's both exciting and daunting, because you have to police you.
Chris Hardwick
#62. I like listening to people talk about things that they love. They get to express things they don't normally get to express.
Chris Hardwick
#63. I do podcasts for the same reasons I do stand-up comedy. I love it, and I don't care if anybody else gets it.
Chris Hardwick
#64. When I was in school, if you wanted a computer, you had to build one. But today, computers are everywhere. We're all obsessed with technology and having the latest gadgets. Nerd culture is ubiquitous.
Chris Hardwick
#65. Choosing one thing usually doesn't mean killing all of the other options forever. Oftentimes, you can always go back and change your mind if you want. If not, and you realize the decision did not pan out the way you had hoped, you now have a lesson for future decisions.
Chris Hardwick
#66. If you're able to build from your falls you'll be unstoppable and damn near fearless. You see, every time you fall down and get back up, you add another piece of body armor to yourself. You learn what not to do, how to do better, and how to create comfort through practice.
Chris Hardwick
#67. I had a personal blog, but why does anyone care that I went shopping for hats?
Chris Hardwick
#68. Mainstream culture is like your mom: It's always a little late to catch on and gets easily confused by technology, but it means well.
Chris Hardwick
#69. I made a lot of changes in my life between my twenties and thirties, and it all sort of revolves around how I think people with nerdier brains tend to problem-solve and approach things differently then "norms."
Chris Hardwick
#70. The nerdist movement is less about consumers; there is a large contingent that are creative nerdists instead of consumers.
Chris Hardwick
#71. Any time you're lucky enough to get on a show people watch, it's a good thing.
Chris Hardwick
#72. When I was in grade school I was into chess club, Latin club, D&D, computer camp - everything that made vaginas go away.
Chris Hardwick
#73. The 'Hipster Nerds' like stuff because they hate it. It's like they ironically like it.
Chris Hardwick
#74. A big company is like trying to steer a luxury liner.
Chris Hardwick
#75. There's not many a man who would get shot and then come visit the family responsible.
Chris Hardwick
#76. Comic-Con is interesting because there's so much going on at once, it's literally impossible to do everything. You need clones and some sort of hoverboard so you can surf over the crowd of packed-in nerds.
Chris Hardwick
#77. Are you a passenger on a ghost ship or are you the pilot?
Chris Hardwick
#78. Jokes that make me laugh out loud when I write them almost always bomb. I have no idea why.
Chris Hardwick
#79. I dated around some, but I've always been a serial monogamist. I don't know how people date around a lot, and not want to stab themselves in the face with a sharp object.
Chris Hardwick
#80. I'm just gonna do a podcast because it's mine, I can control it, I have complete responsibility over it, and no one can touch it.
Chris Hardwick
#81. If I wasn't acting or doing stand-up, I would be in animation. Or if I had the discipline I might studies physics.
Chris Hardwick
#82. The goal of almost every comic is to find a comedy voice - a specific point of view that an audience can latch onto.
Chris Hardwick
#83. Any nerd who grew up around the time that I did, BBC programming was a treasure chest for us.
Chris Hardwick
#84. Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic.
Chris Hardwick
#85. Videogames make you feel like you're actually doing something. Your brain processes the tiered game achievements as real-life achievements. Every time you get to the next level, hot jets of reward chemical coat your brain in a lathery foam, and it seems like you're actually accomplishing stuff.
Chris Hardwick
#87. When comedians get successful, the fans that they have aren't the fans they would hang out with. I don't have that problem.
Chris Hardwick
#88. You can't throw money at the Internet to make it work - it really is all about the quality of the content.
Chris Hardwick
#89. I've seen nerdists make tributes to their obsessions out of Legos that are like works of art. It just goes to show you how pervasive this stuff has become in our culture. It really is an ideology that you can subscribe to now.
Chris Hardwick
#90. Long ago you may have given up control of your brain and set it on autopilot either because it just felt like too much work. And it is work! But for me, this work was well worth it for the prospect of not waking up sad every day.
Chris Hardwick
#91. Being constructively critical is good, as long as your purpose is to improve your methods for future endeavors. Lying in bed and replaying failures and telling yourself you're stupid is a tremendous disservice to your efforts and what you can offer the world.
Chris Hardwick
#92. We are in niche consumption mode, but 'niche' doesn't mean 'small' anymore. Niche can mean focused, and particularly with the Web, which is a global audience ... you can have something niche and still get 10 to 15 million views.
Chris Hardwick
#93. I probably get one or two days off every five or six weeks.
Chris Hardwick
#94. Playing Xbox for 23 hours straight is cool and all, but I'm going to teach you how to spend time on things in your life that will get you the following two things: paid and laid.
Chris Hardwick
#95. Comic-Con is nerd Christmas. People go wanting to have fun.
Chris Hardwick
#96. There's a lot of money being generated by nerds right now. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the list goes on and on. Nerds make more money than our government. And with money comes power.
Chris Hardwick
#97. I'm not fun to bowl with. I take it way too seriously. I have high expectations for myself.
Chris Hardwick
#98. It's funny: when I first started getting vocal about how much I liked 'Doctor Who,' I didn't realize how deep the fan base was.
Chris Hardwick
#100. by structuring it in your life as a musical diary or log, you can control your feelings and change them on a dime if you need to.
Chris Hardwick
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