I Stand Up Quotes

#1. When I started stand-up, the first thing I did was to take an improv class.

J. B. Smoove

#2. Love and I once had a great relationship, but I fear we've broken up. It cheated on me, wrecked my heart, and then went on to date other people. A lot of other people. And I can't stand to watch it, since love's going to cheat on them too.

David Levithan

#3. I've seen stand up comedy, and after a while you start to notice that a lot of people are doing things that are like a lot of other people. There can be a bit of a herd mentality, and that's obviously less interesting because there's less going on. I'm just being totally frank with you.

Dylan Moran

#4. I don't think of myself as funny - I don't fill up a room with my humor ... I would fail miserably as a stand-up comedian.

Steve Carell

#5. Have four things going. I have stand-up comedy, two television shows and I'm working on a play. I like to work, and I fear that something could fall through. You know what they say: 'The show must go off.'

Joy Behar

#6. I don't care what I do - act, stand-up, write, direct - it doesn't matter as long as I'm being creative and it's good work.

Jeff Garlin

#7. On the stand, I asked the witness, "What's your occupation?"
"Make-up artist."
"Objection!" I replied, "Lack of foundation.

Natalya Vorobyova

#8. I stand up for what I believe in and a lot of the time that can be against people's opinions.

Rihanna

#9. I love revolutionaries who have the courage to stand up against the status quo. They're always misunderstood, but they're the ones who are standing up for human rights.

Richard Hatch

#10. I believe the ones who stand up for what we say, which is stay inside the Eurozone, try to fix some things in the memorandum and try to help Greece get out of this mess without leaving the Eurozone, without leaving Europe.

Eva Kaili

#11. I do think that stand-up comedy in general heavily favors masculinity and so I like to act a little feminine onstage.

Bo Burnham

#12. I may not be loud but that doesn't mean I'm not strong within myself. My mum and dad instilled in me to stand up for what I believe in - and I do.

Leona Lewis

#13. What are the differences between me and you, I stand up and continue you just stay down and don't move and you think that nobody will touch. But when you are down, you always easy to be attacked - You will find down "IT" :D :D

Deyth Banger

#14. I am very careful about what I eat, and I exercise pretty much every day, whether it be rock-climbing, running, Muay Thai, yoga, horse riding, stand-up paddleboarding, or plain and simple working out.

Sebastian Roche

#15. I'm always thinking I'm messing up. I did a lot of classes. I can't stand being on stage or the only one talking in a room, so class really helped me deal with that. It doesn't really get any easier, but it helps you focus on the acting.

Travis Fimmel

#16. And now he was mine and I said we should not let our love be threatened.
We should not let the family fall apart.
We should not accept an evil we can change.
We would stand up against it, would we not?
Yes. We should.
We would be heroes, even.

E. Lockhart

#17. What's profound and exciting is the way young people are taking advantage of the fact that the Internet enables everyone to have a megaphone. It enables everyone to stand up and say, 'I deserve to be heard, and I demand that you listen.'

Chelsea Clinton

#18. I'm going to try really hard not to be bossy, but I've only done stand-up comedy and then my own show where you're the total boss of everything!

Rosie O'Donnell

#19. I took an acting class. After the first day, the teacher quit, so they said take another. When I saw 'How to be a Stand-up Comedian,' it resonated. I realized I'd rather make 200 people laugh than make one person cry.

Wendy Liebman

#20. I think we have to ask this administration, and the President specifically, about using their political capital now to stand up for the American consumer who is getting clobbered by these gasoline and oil prices.

Ron Wyden

#21. I will never let you fall
I'll stand up with you forever
I'll be there for you through it all
Even if saving you sends me to heaven

Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

#22. I'm not a comedian, I'm not a stand-up and I don't come from a comedy background. I am an actor, but I've had a very fortunate foray into comedy, and it seems to have become a bit of a strength, and you can't complain when you become known for something.

Darren Boyd

#23. If Republicans are going in the wrong direction, I am still willing to stand up against them.

Steve Scalise

#24. I would say that I have a love-hate relationship with almost everything in my life, including stand-up.

Chelsea Peretti

#25. If I couldn't stand up for what I believed in, then I wasn't the person I strived to be.

Mariana Zapata

#26. When I am in the Scottish Parliament chamber, I often feel the need to sit for the entire debate. It's only courteous to listen to what everyone has to say, although I often find myself desperate to say something but too scared to stand up in case I regret it.

Margo MacDonald

#27. I left school and couldn't find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I've always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.

Robin Williams

#28. Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway.

B.B. King

#29. I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career - anything for a laugh.

Bob Uecker

#30. [Stand-up] might be ballsy, but I'd rather not be an actor. Actors are tools.

Doug Stanhope

#31. You are well within your rights to stand up, interrupt everyone around you and say, 'This is not who I am. This is not what I want. I'm sorry, but you've mistaken me for somebody else.

Iain S. Thomas

#32. Sometimes it just feels so amazing to finally stand up for yourself. I highly recommend it. Life is too short to be taken for granted.

Demi Lovato

#33. I was a rule-follower. I obeyed all forms of authority. I had never before encountered a situation where the authority was clearly wrong and I had to stand up for what was right.

Linda Kage

#34. If you can look at somebody and say, 'I never loved you, you were a mistake,' that's one thing. But if you look at him and say, 'You were everything and I poisoned it because I wouldn't stand up for myself,' that's hard. That's too hard ...

Jennifer Crusie

#35. Looking back, I remember my family laughing a lot. We were never the kind of people that dwelled on hard times. My family laughs when things are tough. Growing up like that, I got used to making jokes about things that were difficult. So when I started doing stand-up, that's what I went towards.

Cristela Alonzo

#36. I did stand-up for a good number of years while I was still living in New York, and those people primarily knew me as 'the kid stand-up.'

Samm Levine

#37. At college, I felt frustrated thinking three years was a long time and I just wanted a job but afterwards I was in employment the whole time. I got into a theatre company and started doing stand-up gigs for cash, so I lived hand-to-mouth, but there was always enough to pay the bills.

Bill Bailey

#38. Mortal through I be, yea ephemeral, if but a moment
I gaze up at the night's starry domain of heaven,
Then no longer on earth I stand; I touch the Creator,
And my lively spirit drinketh immortality.

Ptolemy

#39. I'm not going to freeze under the pressure. I'm hoping I can stand up to it.

Carly Rae Jepsen

#40. If I can sit down for freedom, you can stand up for children.

Rosa Parks

#41. I had a massive amount of self-belief when I did stand-up.

Johnny Vegas

#42. I feel like every time I go out, I want to do a good job. I want people to say that he's just as good at stand-up as he is in some of the movies I've seen him in, so I try to do the best every time I go out there.

Chris Tucker

#43. What's cool about Twitter is that you can make a joke about something very of-the-moment or random that I wouldn't be able to joke about in stand-up.

Aziz Ansari

#44. Hey, man, I toss a stick for a living. Gotta spice up that deal, y'know. Gotta stand out.

Breaux Greer

#45. Comedy doesn't really matter that much; I know that. I treat it like an adult - I don't treat it like a child or a god, which some people do. This might just be in America, but 'stand-up comedy' is something very particular that I don't particularly relate to.

Bo Burnham

#46. My goal was to do something that incorporated all the stuff I do and have it feel like something new, like it was hopefully taking the stand-up special paradigm and turning it on its head.

Nick Kroll

#47. I love stand-up, but the process of writing is a little more lonely. I want to keep doing both, though.

Jack Whitehall

#48. There's no interference in stand-up. It's all the things it's hard to get in film: I get to have a wife, I get to have kids. I get to be sexual. I get to grow. I get to be a man.

Chris Rock

#49. I think it's so important as an artist to stand up for what you believe in, and I think that if equal rights is something that you really believe in, and you have a voice that people listen to, and you need to share that - I think that's really important.

Betty Who

#50. I started out in stand-up when I was 18, which is really masochistic, and I did it really till I started going in movies. I did it for about three years out in LA.

Debra Winger

#51. I still like doing stand-up now, but it's not the same. It used to be that I was out there with five other comedians. Now I usually just do it alone.

Adam Sandler

#52. I have no idea what I'm going to say when I stand up to give a toast. But I do know that anything I say I find funny.

Don Rickles

#53. The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#54. With my heart thumping, I froze up. I didn't dance. I was born with two left feet and they only worked together in the saddle. "Come on," Casey urged and grabbed my hand. "I wore my steel-toe boots. You can stand on my feet for all I care.

Brittney Joy

#55. In many times, after creating a piece of work I want to stand up and applaud.

Shawn Lukas

#56. I've done stand-up since I was 18 years old, and I absolutely love it, but I used to go onstage, and the audience was my peers. Now I go onstage, and I could be their mother.

Judy Gold

#57. Some people use stand-up to get something else in their careers, but it's truly the art form of stand-up I love.

Judy Gold

#58. I think my brand of country music is that's been influenced by not just the rough-stock rodeo side or Ted Nugent's "let's get crazy style", but also the stand-up and sing style's like George Strait and Merle Haggard, and also the wild side of Chris Ledoux

Cody Johnson

#59. You're just so excited that you have this record deal or this movie opportunity that you don't stand up for yourself and say, This is what I want to do.

Solange Knowles

#60. Now, I talk to athletes who answer questions with a 'yeah'. I realize I used to do that. Or they answer very quickly and you stand there trying to come up with another question to ask. I've seen both sides and it's been very educational.

Evelyn Ashford

#61. I tried to be really tough when I was younger. I felt I had to stand up for myself. I never felt like I fit in.

Missy Peregrym

#62. Things that make me laugh range from a wonderful stand-up like Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K. and Chris Rock to my son Gabe, who does great improv work. I also look backwards to the great comedic actors like Jackie Gleason, Paul Lynde and Phil Silvers.

Jason Alexander

#63. Go round cringing like a dog, Matt," he said, "and folks will treat you like one. Stand up like a man, and they'll treat you like a man." That was fine for Weaver, but I wondered sometimes, How exactly do you stand up like a man when you're a girl?

Jennifer Donnelly

#64. I think that people who stand up for what they believe in, no matter how unpopular, should be celebrated, not cast aside.

Craig Lancaster

#65. By the time I started doing stand-up, the club scene had died.

Jen Kirkman

#66. For me and my husband, one of my biggest peeves is that I can't stand for an old friend or a woman to walk in the room and just run up and speak to my husband, but they don't talk to me.

Ashton Shepherd

#67. I remember someone said to me, "Never stand up when you can sit down, never sit down when you can lie down, never lie down when you can be asleep." Those are bits of advice that I haven't taken, really. I've done the opposite of them, but they have stayed with me.

Michael Sheen

#68. 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

#69. The truth is, I don't have any problem with journalists - I count some of them as friends - also some of my heroes are journalists, I'm a big fan of Robert Fisk - great people or crazy people who are prepared to stand up for what's right.

Daniel Craig

#70. I hate that leaders have the power to rule over the weak, transforming them into something they are not. But is that really true? Or just an excuse we use to be weak and not stand up for what is right?

H.J. Lawson

#71. In storytelling you kind of put your nightmares up there, you put your dreams up there and people can see them better because they can stand outside of it and look at it and recognize themselves inside it. So I feel that that in and of itself is a spiritual thing.

Holly Hunter

#72. Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte; I didn't know what I was doing, and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.

Patton Oswalt

#73. I refuse to stand up in front of a rabbi and my friends and the woman I love - who I will tell you I can love with all my heart - and promise she will be the only one I will ever have until the day I die. That's a lie.

Gene Simmons

#74. My wife changes the way that I dress. She makes me dress nicer than I want to dress. I feel like I perpetually dress like a 14-year-old boy, and she makes me stand up straight and wear clean clothes.

Adam Driver

#75. Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it's dangerous.

Steven Wright

#76. Stand up for what you believe. Follow your gut, which most of the time is your heart talking. This has been my hardest lesson. I have given this advice and not always followed it myself. The truth is, there is no other way.

Faith Hill

#77. As a comedian, I can walk out in front of 5000 people and not worry about a thing. Not a thing, believe me. But to stand up a face a camera and crew of maybe 15 guys and get up tight about it - to me that's weird.

Bill Cosby

#78. I've battled with that type of stuff, but what I've found is that by doing stand-up, I've actually learned about depression and how to combat it. I don't have clinical, but I've definitely had my bouts with it.

Bill Burr

#79. I have learned that particularly clever ideas do not always stand up under close scrutiny.

Elizabeth Peters

#80. I can't tell you what will happen over the next four years. But I can only stand here tonight, as a wife, a mother, a grandmother, an American, and make you this solemn commitment: This man will not fail. This man will not let us down. This man will lift up America!

Ann Romney

#81. I have always been their rock. A mother's unconditional love is fervent enough to battle against the gates of hell, rise up from her knees and stand gallant, in spite of her gaping war wounds. If only they knew the battle fought and the flood of tearshed without having to endure such agony.

Terry A. O'Neal

#82. I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

Steve Martin

#83. Yeah, there were a few years in the early nineties where I really began to hate what was valued as funny and just sort of what was valued in stand-up, period.

Patton Oswalt

#84. You know, stand-up comedy is where I pretty much started out.

Brion James

#85. TIVO executives stand up and say, 'Well, we're not getting rid of commercials, but we are letting them fast forward, because people like commercials, and if they see one that they like they stop and watch it.' I mean, please.

Dick Wolf

#86. When I was growing up, and other people I knew were getting into trouble, I was somewhere in a deer stand or going to bed early so I could be up before dawn to hunt turkeys. My love of the outdoors kept me solid.

Donald Trump Jr.

#87. Anger surges in me and I stand up. "You have no right -"
He's on his feet towering over me. "What if I want to have a right?

Lisa Renee Jones

#88. I was doing stand-up at a restaurant and there was a chalkboard on the street out front. It said, Soup of the Day: Cream of Asparagus. Ellen DeGeneres.

Ellen DeGeneres

#89. Now, I don't know if you can appreciate this without actually knowing her, but getting Mrs. Stricker to laugh is like getting an octopus to stand up on two legs.

James Patterson

#90. I'm like the Hulk on stage. It's way over the top. That's Bizarro Chris. Sometimes I get off stage and go What did I say?! I'll watch one of my stand-up specials a year later and go Eww, that was mean.

Chris Rock

#91. On these occasions I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be gluttony of the famished; if it were sex it would be a swift furtive stand-up in an alley somewhere.

Margaret Atwood

#92. You know what I'd really like to do the most right now? Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The highest place I can find. Where you can see forever. Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the scenery, and see with my own eyes what's been lost from the world.

Haruki Murakami

#93. People need to write articles and they need to have angles in them and I'm grateful when people are doing articles, but I always say there's not a great mystery to stand-up comedy.

Jim Gaffigan

#94. I took a job in a comedy club - not doing stand-up comedy, because that's my idea of hell, but in the office - and I went traveling.

Phoebe Fox

#95. I want to know who killed my father," Peter growled, shrugging off her fingers and pushing himself away from the wall to stand up straight. "If you think you can help me with that, then you are welcome to try.

Deborah Blake

#96. I performed stand-up because I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. My set was never joke-centric. It was a performance.

Michael Keaton

#97. The two things I understand best are stand-up comedy and martial arts. And those things require an ultimate grasp of the truth. You have to be objective about your skills and abilities to compete in both.

Joe Rogan

#98. During my stage shows, I am so energetic. It's constant! I just don't stand still. I actually got given a mic stand from my team to say 'Just calm down. Stand still for at least two songs.' But now I just pick it up and walk around with it.

Jessie J.

#99. First let me take a piece of chalk and draw a circle round you, so you're safe. There. Now I'll stand guard, keeping a weather eye open for anything threatening, and we can catch up with each other while we wait.

Helen Simpson

#100. A lot of times, working in stand up, you're by yourself, and so you just have to rely on yourself only ... but I like working in an ensemble.

Josh McDermitt