Top 100 John Oliver Quotes
#1. I feel like any time John Oliver is added to something, the comedy is instantly there. He's so funny.
Alison Brie
#2. Welcome to The Daily Show, I'm John Oliver. Jon Stewart is still not here. He is currently living out a live-action Lord of the Rings role-playing experience deep in the New Zealand wilderness.
John Oliver
#3. I got a call saying that George Lucas wanted to meet me. Of all the phone calls I've received - Oliver Stone wants to meet you; Spike Lee wants to meet you - that was the one call I never in a million years thought was going to happen.
John Ridley
#4. Being a Mets fan is like lending someone a lot of money and you just know that you'll never get paid back.
John Oliver
#5. I did sketch comedy, but I never did improv. So I've just tried to learn as I go.
John Oliver
#6. If you've been here, in New York, it has been dominated by the UN General Assembly, the annual event where delegates come from all over the world to f*** up this city's traffic.
John Oliver
#7. If you're asking me, would I have voted for Mitt Romney, the answer is absolutely not. Emphatically not. I cannot envision a world in which I would have voted for Mitt Romney unless I sustained a massive concussion.
John Oliver
#8. Ads are baked into content like chocolate chips into a cookie. Except, it's actually more like raisins into a cookie because no one [expletive] wants them there.
John Oliver
#9. You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.
John Oliver
#10. You know that things are not going well when you lose the moral high ground to a TMZ reporter,
John Oliver
#11. Net neutrality: The only two words that promise more boredom in the English language are 'featuring Sting,'
John Oliver
#12. There are so many low points with stand-up. You are perpetually humiliated, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I don't have any dignity left to lose. An audience can't hurt you anymore when you've been completely dismantled.
John Oliver
#13. Having a human conversation is not something I've had any training in either as a comedian or as, you know, a human being.
John Oliver
#14. Here in America, people come out to see what they've known you to do. In England, it's like everyone comes out to tell you exactly how well they think you're doing.
John Oliver
#15. I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse.
John Oliver
#16. I wanted to be a soccer player. I knew that couldn't happen.
John Oliver
#18. I think it might honestly be time for the Sunshine State to officially change its motto to the Worst State.
John Oliver
#19. You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job.
John Oliver
#20. Western man wrote "his" history as if it were the history of the entire human race.
John Oliver Killens
#21. Oliver North says he is very upset that John Walker could come back to this country and cash in on his celebrity status. He hates to see someone who did something wrong get rewarded by writing a book or getting a TV show out of it.
Jay Leno
#22. The only thing I'm nervous about is talking to guests like human beings, because all of my interviews so far have been attacking people. I have a genuine concern about sitting across from an actor whose movies I obviously haven't seen.
John Oliver
#23. Economics is like the Dutch language - I'm told it makes sense, but I have my doubts.
John Oliver
#24. I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.
John Oliver
#25. I'm British, so obviously I repress any powerful emotions of any kind in relation to anything.
John Oliver
#26. You're sonically racist, Americans. You think we all sound the same, whereas I have definitely a mongrel accent.
John Oliver
#27. People are friendlier in New York than London.
John Oliver
#28. Iran is the middle child of the Axis of Evil. Iraq is the oldest child and gets the lion's share of the attention, and North Korea is the crazy baby.
John Oliver
#29. I feel more at home knowing I'm not really at home. It takes all the pressure off you trying to fit in!
John Oliver
#30. I watch one news channel until my soul can't take it anymore. It's the background of my life.
John Oliver
#31. In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don't really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face.
John Oliver
#32. Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.
John Oliver
#33. There are some people who watch NASCAR for the highly skilled driving - but most people watch it for the crashes.
John Oliver
#34. Politicians don't really bring up religion in England.
John Oliver
#35. Southern people are bigger-hearted and kinder than I had any right to expect.
John Oliver
#36. I'm not really much of an actor, so when I started on 'The Daily Show,' I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson. Having a British accent definitely gave me a sonic leg up on that because there is a faux authority to the British accent in and of itself.
John Oliver
#37. 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
#39. Florida, just because you're shaped like some combination of a gun and a d*ck doesn't mean you have to act that way.
John Oliver
#40. People, I guess, generally come to see me do stand-up with a working knowledge of my broad sense of humor on 'The Daily Show' ... I don't think anyone would mistake me as an actual anchor.
John Oliver
#41. The second [presidential] term changes, and I think that John F. Kennedy certainly ran on that and he knew that second term would give him oxygen, and he needed it. Unfortunately, he didn't get there.
Oliver Stone
#42. Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you.
John Oliver
#43. Attending a Sarah Palin rally was simultaneously one of the strangest and most chilling events of my life.
John Oliver
#44. Mr. President, no one is saying you broke any laws, we're just saying it's a little bit weird you didn't have to.
John Oliver
#45. I have exactly as much rhythm as you think I have.
John Oliver
#46. People in Britain see Richard Quest as a kind of an offensive cartoon character.
John Oliver
#47. Anybody who claims to be excited for April Fools' Day is probably a sociopath.
John Oliver
#48. We have to undo the millions of little white lies that America told itself and the world aboutthe American Black man.
John Oliver Killens
#49. I have occasionally - if ever I do interviews that are difficult or nerve-wracking - I take my wife's dog tags and have them in my pocket because it's a very quick way to realize that what I'm doing is not that important. It's not really worth getting stressed about because it's not, you know, war.
John Oliver
#50. What a tiresome place America would be if freedom meant we all had to think alike or be the same color or wear the same gray flannel suit! That road leads to the conformity of the graveyard!
John Oliver Killens
#51. I think being an outsider in general always helps you in comedy. I think it helps to have an outsider's eye. And so I have an outsider's voice. You know, as soon as I start talking, I don't belong here. And I think that helps in a way.
John Oliver
#52. News is not a game show. You don't win a car if you happen to be right.
John Oliver
#53. I've said yes to everything that Jon Stewart has asked me to do. That's been a pretty good career decision, I think.
John Oliver
#54. 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
#55. I really love stand-up. I'm more than happy to do it for nothing. I've come to America to do it for nothing. It's the American Dream: Work for free.
John Oliver
#56. Democracy is like a tamborine - not everyone can be trusted with it.
John Oliver
#57. Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.
John Oliver
#58. When you see people say crazy things on our show, they mean this stuff,and that's easy to forget: They're not joking.
John Oliver
#59. There's never any time I think I'm a real journalist, because I don't have any of the qualifications or the intentions for that.
John Oliver
#60. It really helps a comedian to be an outsider.
John Oliver
#61. The Negro loves America enough to criticize her fundamentally. Most white Americans simply can't be bothered.
John Oliver Killens
#62. It's pretty physically unsettling, living life on a visa.
John Oliver
#64. I know I'd be an absolutely horrendous politician.
John Oliver
#65. Sarah Palin has been hired back by Fox News, and she only left five months ago. She has now effectively quit quitting. She can't even commit to being uncommitted.
John Oliver
#66. As a general rule, no one should ever be allowed to say there is no history of racial tension here, because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth,
John Oliver
#67. I do one accent - my own. I can make it louder or quieter. That is the sum total of my vocal range. I thought I could do an American accent until I tried it in front of an American - the expression of horror is still burnt onto my retinas.
John Oliver
#68. We invented words; we'll tell you how they're supposed to sound.
John Oliver
#69. When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.
Marv Levy
#70. If you vote for Democrats, you might as well give Al Quaeda a death ray and a manual.
John Oliver
#71. The moment I accept that there's an artistic, redeeming quality in puns, I have a horrible feeling I'll get hooked.
John Oliver
#72. I have a green card now, but they can take that away, yeah, they can take that away at any moment. So please don't; please let me keep it.
John Oliver
#73. Life is a short walk. There is so little time and so much living to achieve.
John Oliver Killens
#74. I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy.
John Oliver
#75. I do not want to leave in [U.S.] ... I cannot make that clear enough to immigration authorities who may be listening to this interview. I don't want to leave, so please don't make me.
John Oliver
#76. I'm British. I don't really have access to my emotions on a daily basis.
John Oliver
#77. Politics is the chloroform of the Irish people, or rather the hashish.
Oliver St. John
#78. Do you know how hard it is to kill 30 million people? It's a logistical nightmare.
John Oliver
#79. Along with the fight to desegregate schools, we must desegregate the entire cultural statement of America, we must desegregate the minds of the American people or we will find that we have won the battle and lost the war.
John Oliver Killens
#80. I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp ... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.
Eric Clapton
#81. Americans just don't understand dry wit.
John Oliver
#82. When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.
John Oliver
#83. You don't really know when stand-up material is TV ready; it's just at what point you're willing to let it go and not work on it anymore. I'm not sure there is a point at which you think: 'And that is finished.'
John Oliver
#84. I realize how desperate it sounds for me, as a comedian, to ask you to laugh at my jokes.
John Oliver
#85. The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.
John Oliver
#86. It's a great time to be doing political satire when the world is on a knife edge.
John Oliver
#87. Ask yourself whether you are happy', observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill, 'and you cease to be so.' At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly.
Oliver Burkeman
#88. I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it.
John Oliver
#89. The Confederate flag is one of those things that should only be seen on t-shirts, belt buckles and bumper stickers to help the rest of us identify the worst people in the world.
John Oliver
#90. My family are from Liverpool, so I have some twang there - I have a Midlands accent, and I was raised about an hour north of London, so my voice is a mess. Although, to American ears, it sounds like the crisp language of a queen's butler.
John Oliver
#91. When you do stand-up, you're just concerned with trying to leave with some semblance of human dignity at the end of your performance.
John Oliver
#92. I find it hard in my general life to think further than the week ahead.
John Oliver
#93. If a queen bee were crossed with a Friesian bull, would not the land flow with milk and honey?
Oliver St. John
#94. I'm always interested in audience interaction. Not so much aggressive audience interaction - I'm genuinely interested in how people see things.
John Oliver
#95. I would never heckle someone. That's why I think I'm so interested in someone that would.
John Oliver
#96. If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring. Apple could put the entire text of "Mein Kampf" inside the iTunes user agreement, and you'd just go agree, agree, agree - what? - agree, agree.
John Oliver
#97. I don't know if there is some psychological thing of wanting to know where your doctor got his degree from before he comes into the medical room.
John Oliver
#98. If your name is Sepp, at the bare minimum you've strangled someone in a bar fight.
John Oliver
#99. the houses much smaller and meek and timid and nondescript, and even the trees were scantily clad.
John Oliver Killens
#100. Sometimes it's good to remember how bad food can be, so you can enjoy the concept of flavour to the fullest.
John Oliver
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