Top 100 Comedian Quotes
#1. The pressure to being a comedian is being funny, but I've given that up, so there is no pressure whatsoever.
Gilbert Gottfried
#2. I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares - like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes.
Neil LaBute
#3. As a standup comedian, I've worked almost every New Year's Eve of my adult life. It's the best-paying night of the year.
Elayne Boosler
#4. I'm funny. I'm a comedian. I'm not a clown.
Bernie Mac
#5. As we got older, we grew comfortable in roles that met our parents' expectations. Nora was the smart one. Delia, the comedian. I was the pretty, obedient one. And Amy was the adventurous mischief-maker.
Hallie Ephron
#6. So many people, my friends and family, were all saying, "You're so funny. Why don't you become a comedian or an actor?" But it wasn't a reality at the time, it wasn't a road that Latin people were accepted in.
John Leguizamo
#7. When I started, you didn't make a lot of money by being a comedian. You didn't get a lot of respect.
David Steinberg
#8. As a comedian, you want people to like you. That's part of why you're there in the first place: You have this unquenchable need to be liked, and then when you divert from that and take a chance at doing something that has moments of fierce unlikeability, you can hit some real low points.
Mike Birbiglia
#9. At one point when I was very young, when I was first starting out, I thought, 'Well, one day I'll be able to put all the music away and become a real comedian.' But then I realized there are amazing musical comedians out there, that musical comedy is probably something I'll always want to pursue.
Bo Burnham
#10. The danger for a comedian on Twitter is the same danger that any civilian faces: sometimes you gotta put that phone down and go live your life. When you're on Twitter, you're not living, and if you're not living, you're not taking in stimuli with which you can create new material.
Rob Delaney
#11. As a comedian I appreciate every kind of comedy. You decide for yourself what you're going to do.
Jeff Foxworthy
#12. A comedian's body is funny as well as his mind being funny, his whole personage is funny.
Bobby Darin
#13. If you can't write your own material, you have very little chance of making it as a comedian.
Rodney Dangerfield
#14. I'm not a comedian. I'm an actor who just happens to be funny on occasion.
Anthony Anderson
#15. I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about.
Jon Stewart
#16. Being a professional comedian is doing it right and good, when you don't feel like it.
Franklyn Ajaye
#17. For a long time I thought I knew for sure who I was. I grew up in New Orleans and became a comedian. And there was everything that came along with that. The nightclubs. The smoking. The drinking. Then I turned 13.
Ellen DeGeneres
#18. Remember, folks, I am a comedian, not a journalist.
Kathy Griffin
#19. Whenever I go on a show with a comedian I just counter punch.
Bill O'Reilly
#20. I started as a stand-up comedian. I wanted to be Carol Burnett when I was growing up.
Stephanie Miller
#21. I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.
Steve Martin
#22. There are three goals for any comedian: to make a living as a comedian; I've been fortunate to do that. To make a name for yourself and to be famous would be great - because it would give me that freedom.
Alonzo Bodden
#23. I have not moved out of the comedian's box into the news box. The news box is moving towards me.
Jon Stewart
#24. Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang - even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.
Mindy Kaling
#25. Every comedian has a moment in his life when he realizes he's a little bit different from everyone else. It's like being the only guy in a movie who sees the ghost. The ghost talks to you and you talk to him. Then you turn to your friend and say, Hey. Do you see that ghost? And he says, What ghost?
Chris Rock
#26. You can't hold me to the same standard as the president or a school teacher. I'm just a comedian. My job is like Archie Bunker.
Tracy Morgan
#27. I was a stand-up comedian for 10 years, if you can believe it. And I gave it up at age 22.
Samm Levine
#28. Seth Meyers is highly overrated as a comedian.
Donald Trump
#29. I really don't know what makes a comedian. I think it's a family background and environment. Yet if you put the same ingredients in another person, he may never utter a funny line.
Bob Newhart
#30. [Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was nominated for a Grammy for his spoken-word children's album] Halloween ... Don't Give Up on Me.
Jamie Lee Curtis
#31. Every group needs a comedian. A comic who is politically incorrect at the Berkeley campus might slay them at a Klan rally.
Lenny Bruce
#32. I love hecklers. They remind you that you are a comedian.
Dane Cook
#33. I think Flip Wilson is a brillant comedian.
Bobby Darin
#34. I'm trying to be a comedian, you know?
Liam Neeson
#35. I thought she was the funniest woman, and I believed being a comedian was the most exciting thing you could be.
Maya Rudolph
#36. My career was exploding at the same time that social media itself was expanding. But when my online videos were taking off, I didn't think, 'Oh, great! I'm going to be able to parlay this into a career!' I just wanted to be a comedian. I just wanted to perform live.
Bo Burnham
#37. [Adoption] could turn you into an exquisite comedian. Ask Richard Pryor's ghost.
Keegan-Michael Key
#38. I'm a good counter comedian. I can just work it off with looks, or have something crazy to say back. That works for me.
Ice Cube
#39. To be a comedian, you gotta jokesmith, there's no way around it.
John Leguizamo
#40. I'm best known as a stand-up comedian, but I'm a good actor in the right role.
Marcus Brigstocke
#41. I don't consider myself a comedian because I don't really concern myself too much with jokes.
Paul Rudd
#42. You say you're a comedian, you always have to be on guard.
Anthony Anderson
#43. I've always been the king of silence. I've always been a minimalist comedian. I've taken my influence from Jack Benny, who was the king of that ... I've always done 'less is more.'
Albert Brooks
#44. I am not so secretly a comedian. I write a lot of my own material if you've seen videos I've done. I write jokes.
Laura Benanti
#45. It takes a while to realize that just because you're a stand-up comedian and you do comedy, you're not going to be good at all comedy.
Jenny Slate
#46. As a comedian who's used to, like, punching the jokes, it's hard to teach yourself that that's not the strong choice in the sense that you have to really have to dial it back.
Allison Tolman
#47. There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I dont even have to exaggerate.
Will Rogers
#48. Jesse has opened for me extensively on the road so I've seen him do hundreds of sets. He is always super funny, has tons of material and the crowds love him. Bottom line, Jesse Joyce is a great comedian.
Greg Giraldo
#49. Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.
Alan Moore
#50. You are always a comedian by default. You are this way because you've been forced to be this way, but it is better to be the hero. So if you can be a persona, the great one of my lifetime of course was and is Marlon Brando.
Woody Allen
#51. I have a pretty fresh delivery. I feel that I am probably more of a dramatic actor, but I'm also a comedian. Every day I am polishing up my skills.
Tone Bell
#52. Audiences have proved time and again that they don't want a steady diet of any entertainer airing his social views - especially if he's a comedian.
Johnny Carson
#53. He was so good at everything he did. You can't call Ronnie Barker a comedian. He was an actor, and a great writer.
Bruce Forsyth
#54. I come from the stage. I started my career as a stand-up comedian and then later on became an actor.
Patrick Huard
#55. I've loved the Internet space in terms of creative content control and ownership, the things I haven't had since I started as a stand-up comedian.
Kevin Pollak
#56. I'm actually a big fan of Kathy Griffin because I think she's really funny. I think she's really self-deprecating, which is something I like to see in a comedian. I think those are really the best comedians: people who can make fun of themselves.
Chelsea Handler
#57. I'm an actor, I'm not a comedian, I never was a comedian.
Jonah Hill
#58. No matter how big a comedian gets, they're ultimately all just a bunch of nerds with their weird insecurities. You realize these are just the people in high school who were making people laugh.
Reggie Watts
#59. When I was seven, I said, "I want to act." When I was 10, I realized that films exist, and I wanted to be in them. Not a comedian, I wanted to be a dramatic actor. Films just seemed such fun, and like such a great thing to do.
Eddie Izzard
#60. I never thought I'd be a comedian. But, growing up, I simply loved watching comedy. The '80s was huge for comedy in the US. Eddie Murphy blew me away with his film Delirious.
Arj Barker
#61. Back when Jerry Seinfeld was just another comedian hanging around the clubs, I'd imitate him to amuse myself and the other comics. The club owners would say, 'What are you doing that for? Nobody knows him.'
Gilbert Gottfried
#62. Being a comedian, people tell me stuff they shouldn't tell their therapist.
Jeff Foxworthy
#64. I'm a comedian who happens to be Latino. What's the difference? The difference is, my special will air on Comedy Central, not Telemundo.
Gabriel Iglesias
#65. I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian, even as a kid. Me and my dad would watch 'Evening at the Improv' on A&E.
Adam DeVine
#66. It takes many years to be a great comedian.
Don Rickles
#67. I'm not a comedian. I didn't study sketch comedy; my background isn't that.
Paul Rudd
#68. Being a rapper is about being cool, but being a comedian, you're not supposed to be the coolest guy.
Aziz Ansari
#69. The tragic hero prefers death to prudence. The comedian prefers playing tricks to winning. Only the villain really plays to win.
Mason Cooley
#70. When you do stuff as a comedian, Hollywood sees you as a comedian and so most of the calls I get are for a funny movie or something like that.
Cedric The Entertainer
#71. There's a difference between being a comic and a comedian. A comic is a guy who says funny things, and a comedian is a guy who says things funny, and he has a style and point of view that will last much longer.
Milton Berle
#72. I'm a very straightforward person. But that's fine for a comedian. Because a lot of times you're talking about everyone else.
John Mulaney
#73. I think it's a comedian's job to make everything funny. Nothing is off-limits.
Donald Glover
#74. There is a very difficult period in a comedian's career - it's that window of time where you're good enough to draw tickets but nobody knows you yet.
Bill Burr
#75. Comics write to their point of view. If you're an exceedingly irreverent comedian, you've got to see where that point of view fits or produces the most funny.
Jim Gaffigan
#76. Whether people know the evolution of the conversation or not, I don't know, but thematically, as a comedian, I stay in the same ballpark - around my issues and my philosophy of life.
Marc Maron
#77. Many comedians - both male and female - do have an "I will never date another comedian" rule.
Chris Gethard
#78. I guess I still feel that I'm a comedian; if I had to pick one thing that I feel like I could do, it would be that. That doesn't mean that I like it, but I feel that's what I am.
Larry David
#80. The Kazakh authorities banned the film and threatened to sue the comedian after its release in 2006. But later Kazakhstan's foreign minister said he is 'grateful' to Borat for 'helping attract tourists' to the country.
Anupama Chopra
#81. When I'm going to see a comedian, I don't want to see them hold back, and when I'm reading a book, I don't want to hear an abridged version.
Kathy Griffin
#82. 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
#83. I grew up in a food-obsessed Italian family, so food was always front and center in my life. I was a food obsessed person who morphed into a comedian and tried to figure out a way to make fun of my cake and eat it too.
Nadia Giosia
#84. I tell people I'm a stand-up comedian two hours a week. The rest of the time, I'm somebody's husband, I'm somebody's father. I'm a man. I take great pride in that.
Steve Harvey
#85. It seems that a lot of people, who haven't known of me as a pianist, think I've just started off as a comedian. And so for them the piano was something extra. But, of course, playing the piano was something that came before all of what's happened now.
Dudley Moore
#86. I think of myself as an Indian comedian, but I've had British and American schooling. I always had this feeling of not fitting in anywhere, of observing situations from the outside.
Vir Das
#87. For a comedian, there is nothing better than watching another great comedian.
Bob Newhart
#88. Every comedian dreams of hosting 'The Tonight Show' and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second.
Conan O'Brien
#89. I am a product ... I'm a comedian. I'm not curing cancer. In the end, I tell jokes. I make people laugh. I make sense out of ridiculous situations, but in the end, it's all about laughter. It's all about your cheek hurting, your stomach hurting.
Carlos Mencia
#91. I was influenced by every comedian I ever saw work. That's the only way you learn how to do it.
Bob Newhart
#92. I was the Head Boy of East High School in 1999. I represent 303 - the area code, not the band - Mile High, until I die. I'm 31, a comedian; I juggle, but I don't glove it. I think waxed mustaches run a very thin line between hipster and 1800s barkeep.
T. J. Miller
#93. I've been a stand-up comedian for years, and I can be silly.
Diane Neal
#94. When it comes to English stand-up comedy, Indians have only seen the best - Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and the like. So, when someone claims to be an English stand-up comedian in India, he'd better be very good if he's going to make a life of it.
Vir Das
#95. I set out to become a comedian, and I said in order to do that the first thing I'll do is become a disc jockey and know my pop music. I like it, my voice is good, and I can start out getting confidence without an audience in front of me.
George Carlin
#96. I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.
Chris Tucker
#97. I got my first television at Stanford when I was 20, and I used to watch 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'. He played my father on 'Becker,' and he's still one of my heroes. Along with John Cleese, he's my favourite physical comedian.
Ted Danson
#98. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.
Adam Sandler
#99. To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.
Dick Gregory
#100. Ultimately, an audience wants to laugh. That's who they like, the comedian who makes them laugh.
Ted Alexandro
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