Great Comedian Quotes

#1. One can always lament, you know - but to laugh in the face of life, that's very hard. And for me the great tragedian should also be a great comedian.

Martha Graham

#2. I wanted to make a living, but I really was not interested in money at all. I was interested in being a great comedian.

Larry David

#3. Any of Bette Midler's concerts should be required viewing for every actor/performer. She has the audience in the palm of her hands at all times and can switch emotions on a dime: Great singer, great actress, great comedian - fearless.

Bryan Batt

#4. Woody Allen is a great dramatist and a great comedian.

Cate Blanchett

#5. 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

#6. It takes many years to be a great comedian.

Don Rickles

#7. To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.

Dick Gregory

#8. For a comedian, there is nothing better than watching another great comedian.

Bob Newhart

#9. Dick Gregory was a great comedian who went and got arrested, did hunger strikes, protests. It never hurt his career to be outspoken.

Joe Rogan

#10. I think humor is important for all of us, and a great comedian is a great treasure.

Leila Josefowicz

#11. Age, style, where you come from, where you were born, it's different every time, which, to me, is refreshing because it says that there isn't any one thing, one formula or kind of character that makes a great comedian. Everybody has had a different approach.

Alan King

#12. For me, comedians are like the epitome for everything great, and they terrify me. I just want to be them. I want to be like them.

Tatiana Maslany

#13. You never have a comedian who hasn't got a very deep strain of sadness within him or her. Every great clown has been very near to tragedy.

Margaret Rutherford

#14. I, myself, have killed six people. All random, all undetected, no way to trace them to me. And, let me tell you, there's nothin' like it. It's a great feeling. Yeah, I know, you're thinking. 'Aw, he's a comedian. He's just sayin' that stuff.' Good. That's exactly what I want you to think.

George Carlin

#15. Although I had good hand-eye coordination, I was so tall and skinny and muscularly weak that I just was not well coordinated. But what I started to do quite early on was watch some of the great old silent comedians, like Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin, and then later on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.

John Cleese

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. I never really set out to be a comedian, but as a kid, I loved doing sketches and playing characters. And then a great friend kept telling me I should be a comedian, so I followed her advice and gave it a shot.

Jerrod Carmichael

#22. Great Canadian comics are often outsiders and insiders at the same time. That's a great perspective for a comedian.

David Steinberg

#23. The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.

Jack Dee

#24. It would be great to be able to follow in the footsteps of Bill Murray. I really respect his ability as a comedian, obviously, but even more so as an actor.

Will Ferrell

#25. I think it's great training for any comedian to start on cows. Because with cows, you expect them to be bored and just stare at you blankly. And that's exactly what you'll get at a comedy club. If you can toughen up with a cow audience, then you'll never be worried with a human audience.

Kristen Schaal

#26. George Carlin was great right up to the end of his life. But Richard Pryor was probably the best, most gifted stand-up comedian who will ever live.

Denis Leary

#27. What great comedians, great comic writers, great comic actors do is that they just read the headlines with the right eyebrow position and it's funny.

David Salle

#28. 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

#29. Frank Fay [...] became renowned as the first of the great comic emcees - and in many minds the first stand-up comedian.

Kliph Nesteroff

#30. After we'd filmed one series of 'Kiss Me Kate,' everyone was saying: 'The guy's got great comic timing,' - that was the first I'd heard of it. I'm not a comedian, I don't want to depend on a singular box of tricks. I like story and characters, to take on world views that are not my own.

Darren Boyd

#31. Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal improviser. His parables are great one-liners.

Camille Paglia

#32. I'm all about showing people that I'm a little messed up, I have a lot of the same problems you have. By exposing myself and putting myself out there, people can relate to me and my act won't grow stale. I mean, nobody wants to hear a comedian say, 'Life is great.'

Gabriel Iglesias

#33. A lot of us [comedians] are drawn to the stage or show business or whatever because we didn't feel so great about ourselves, and we didn't know how to do anything about that, so we sought external approval.

Barry Crimmins

#34. I believe in being honest with myself. If there's one thing I hate it's when a comedian is great and won't admit it. I've never met one like that, but if I did, I'd hate them.

Jack Benny

#35. Dave Chappelle is about as gifted as it gets, as a performer and comedian.It's always great to watch him work. He started around fourteen and he's in his forties now, so he's probably been doing it for close to thirty years. He's brilliant.

Ted Alexandro

#36. There's that great Bill Hicks line - the comedian - where he says, "Are you proud to be an American?" "I don't know. It's just where my parents had sex."

Josh Radnor

#37. By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.

John Cleese

#38. Mel Brooks was a young fan at the time: 'Eddie Cantor was very important to me. Very influential on my work. The sketches were fast and furious - and Cantor was great at supporting the other guy in the sketch. It was Cantor who was making it all work for me.

Kliph Nesteroff

#39. I may sound like a megalomaniac, but I feel like I'm equipped to become a great, memorable comedian, if I keep working my ass off and staying at the pace I'm at, and I feel a responsibility to do that because of the women who have done it before me, and the ones who need to do it after me.

Amy Schumer

#40. I believe that any type of education can be great, but an education about ourselves can create something wonderful. I am a comedian, but people have called me a motivational speaker. I don't really consider myself that at all.

Andy Andrews