Top 100 Quotes About Comedians
#1. Comedians have to write to survive because you don't get cast for your beauty.
Sally Phillips
#2. It's still amazing to me to walk down the halls of 'SNL.' You see pictures of the greatest comedians we grew up worshiping, basically. It's crazy to be able to still work there.
Jorma Taccone
#3. If comedians were truly free of repression, there would not be an inherent need to perform for the love of a roomful of total strangers.
Matt Roper
#4. I'd say any good set or any comedy that I've worked on, that's worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, 'What if you say this? What about this?'
Amy Poehler
#5. 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
#6. Comedians don't have hits. You have to have a whole brand-new hour. You have no hits to rely on.
Aziz Ansari
#7. Comedians rarely have writers, and if you do it's usually a sign of laziness.
Jim Gaffigan
#8. We mustn't complain too much of being comedians - it's an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed - that's all. We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men.
Graham Greene
#9. Comedians are the one who have to tell the emperor he has no clothes on.
Chris Rock
#10. When I hit the scene, there was Billy Connolly and Max Boyce. It was all mother-in-law and Irish jokes, and we broke the mould. Now there are thousands of comedians out there, and I don't think I can be above it all.
Jasper Carrott
#11. Comedians still make fun of Bill's out-of-control appetites, but with Hillary, the mockery is about how she lets nothing be out of control.
Rich Lowry
#12. When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.
Dick Van Dyke
#13. Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
Will Rogers
#14. All comedians are, in a way, anarchists. Our job is to make fun of the existing world.
Bob Newhart
#15. I do love standup. I love comedians. They're my community. Also, because I know so many of them, I know the value of them. I know what they can do.
Louis C.K.
#16. My dad loved comedians, especially George Jessel, and he loved Henny Youngman and Buddy Hackett.
Al Franken
#17. This is something that the nimblest standup comedians learn, over time, to handle gracefully. They'll go between prepared material, then they'll respond to what's happening in the room and weave it back into the prepared material and so on.
John Hodgman
#18. I think comedians start off as pranksters or something.
Kyle Dunnigan
#19. 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
#20. Many comedians - both male and female - do have an "I will never date another comedian" rule.
Chris Gethard
#21. Some comedians are silly or goofy or straight joke writers who avoid anything subversive or political. Others are drawn to it. The beauty of standup is there is room for everyone, and years of performing in front of crowds will dictate what you can or can't do.
Ted Alexandro
#22. With a lot of comedians, one of their major attributes is that they look comedic, with a certain hangdog or manic expression. I look like the neighborhood bully. That doesn't elicit laughter.
Sylvester Stallone
#23. I sometimes think of not doing Twitter or Facebook anymore, but that's how people find their favorite bands and comedians.
Mike Birbiglia
#24. Comedians dissect jokes all the time. Comedians are beautiful structuralists. But ultimately it's an athletic endeavor.
Stephen Colbert
#25. Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.
H.L. Mencken
#26. You shouldn't listen to us at all if you're looking for information. We don't take ourselves seriously on any level; we're just comedians.
Stephen Colbert
#27. I did six Broadway shows, and I noticed there weren't many female comedians. When I went to a dancing audition, there were 1,000 girls. And there were three jobs. So I said I'll just try comedy. And I loved it.
Rita Rudner
#28. I thought I better warn you that I am not one of those politically correct comedians, but it turns out that also I'm not really that racist, homophobic or woman hating either, so you might not notice
Robin Ince
#29. The best part is just having a partner. There is no real worst part. I'm not going to say there's a worst part. I mean I'm a comedian - comedians like to work alone. So maybe I'm not the ideal guy to be married to, in that sense.
Chris Rock
#30. Sometimes you watch comedians and feel like they're jerking off in front of you, but they want you to see how big it is.
Jenny Slate
#31. Women don't want to exchange places with men. Male chauvinists, science-fiction writers and comedians may favor that idea for its shock value, but psychologists say it is a fantasy based on ruling-class ego and guilt.
Gloria Steinem
#32. I think it's kind of crazy that we're still calling comedians "female comedians." That seems more like a sneak attack.
Ilana Glazer
#33. All of my favorite actresses are comedians at heart: Shirley MacLaine and Madeline Kahn, Diane Keaton and Debra Winger. And they are all amazing dramatic actresses, but everything they do is funny.
Casey Wilson
#34. I kind of was raised at The Comedy Store by comedians. When you see my dad on stage before me and then you see me, you'll see where I got a lot of my stuff.
Pauly Shore
#35. As comedians, we are all laughing because life is so horrible. Life is so difficult, and I cope with it by making jokes about absolutely everything.
Joan Rivers
#36. There's this other world where all comedians want to do is make funny videos. Typically what's happened in the past is that a comedian gets a standup career and over the course of 20 years builds it up to the point where Comedy Central gives them a sketch show.
Gavin McInnes
#37. A lot of the comedians don't even tell the joke. Like only three tell the joke, the rest of them dissect it.
Bob Saget
#38. I would love to do a serious period drama. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you'll find most comedians want to do more serious stuff, most musicians want to be comedians, and most serious actors want to be musicians.
Amy Poehler
#39. At the same time, we can't blame comedians for taking time to learn. Any critic of comedy who believes that he has always, universally, been on the right side of justice is engaging in a hypocrisy that is itself a joke.
Guy Branum
#40. I think comedians have a function in society, which is to make fun of our icons.
Julie Brown
#41. If you know me, I don't live in this dismal world. I mean, I like to have fun. My friends are comedians.
Linda Blair
#43. I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.
Patton Oswalt
#44. I'm attracted to working with comedians because they don't have that stars' idea of what a hero should be. The downside is they're always addressing the camera too much.
Michel Gondry
#45. I definitely relate so much to a lot of women in comedy, but I don't love segregating the genders. I'm just as influenced by male comedians as I am female comedians.
Abbi Jacobson
#46. I try to be careful not to put the cart before the horse. I try not to create comedy for other comedians to like. I want everybody to like it. I want audiences to like it, but I also want comedians to like it. I'm selfish. I want everybody to laugh!
Brian Regan
#47. The funniest part of that joke is, 'say what you will about Hitler'.
-to Ricky Gervais on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
Jerry Seinfeld
#48. The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming.
Marc Maron
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. You can't do anything to be funny. That's cringeworthy. If your humor comes out of a place of love every time, you don't make the joke bigger than you. The funniest comedians are in touch with their emotional level.
John Krasinski
#52. I think a lot of people think that we [comedians] are nerveless people in the theatre, that we don't feel that kind of terror which traditionally anyone who has to do any public speaking feels. It's worse for actors, because our livelihood depends on it.
Barry Humphries
#53. The women doing comedy do not even think of themselves as 'female' comedians.
Jen Kirkman
#54. Some comedians love their characters. I don't fall in love with mine. In fact, I get tired of them very fast. You have to be willing to throw it all away.
John Belushi
#56. It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.
Wanda Sykes
#59. A lot of amazing comedians that I've worked with just really follow their instincts and you can't really teach someone comedic timing. And you just kind of have it.
Chelsea Handler
#61. The tragedy for comedians is there's nothing more they want than to be liked. We desperately seek approval. It's almost like a personality disorder you can do as a job.
Jimmy Carr
#63. Comedians walk out, get a feel for the crowd. If it's not going good, we change directions. If we got to drag your momma into this thing, we will. Whatever we got to do.
Steve Harvey
#64. Blacks on prime-time TV are only portrayed as comedians - and often in no better a light than 'Amos & Andy.'
Don Cornelius
#65. I don't really like actors. Actors are like terrible comedians with no punch lines. It's all about them. They talk about themselves all the time. They bore the sh - t out of you.
Joe Rogan
#66. To me, comedians are the last great storytellers because they depict their stories and create their effect with so few words. In the span of a couple minutes, stand-up comics can communicate more emotion than most novels do in hours worth of reading.
Chuck Palahniuk
#67. I guess ultimately a lot of comedians just wanna be taken seriously.
Will Ferrell
#68. Every comedian works differently. Some comedians might do just observational stuff and they don't do anything personal, and other people.. everything they do is personal and they don't do any observational stuff at all. There's no right or wrong, it's just that everybody picks their own approach.
Brian Regan
#69. I was trained classically, and that's something that I want to do, but I do want to say that right now it's a good market for female comedians, and I want to explore that right now. I really do want to do dramas and meatier roles, especially film.
Eliza Coupe
#70. Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.
James Lipton
#71. I've been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled.
Wendy Liebman
#72. There is plenty of television. There are plenty of talk shows. There are plenty of comedians. But there is not plenty of worship of the true and living God.
Charles R. Swindoll
#73. I think a lot of actors, comedians, musicians, artists are drawn to this world, because you're allowed to excavate whatever it is that you're struggling with, and hopefully turn it into art.
Sandra Bullock
#74. All comedians are preoccupied with one thing and with one thing only-themmm-selllves. It's a horrible lot in life.
David Letterman
#75. A lot of people who claim they're political comedians are just comedians who have opinions. But they stop being funny the minute they give their opinions.
Gilbert Gottfried
#76. I myself grew up when radio was very important. I'd come home from school and turn on the radio. There were funny comedians and wonderful music, and there were plays. I used to pass time with radio.
Kurt Vonnegut
#77. Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times.
Mort Sahl
#78. I like the tradition of the Oscars. I like that some of the greatest comedians ever have hosted the show.
Chris Rock
#79. Donald Trump is not running for president. This is devastating news for Trump's supporters - all of whom are late night comedians.
Conan O'Brien
#80. When I started, I was doing all the good comedians I'd ever seen. Then I developed my own voice. My routines are my natural way of looking at the world.
Bob Newhart
#81. I'm a comedian, and the other comedians are played by comedians, the same way that in 'Once' there are the musicians that hang out together.
Mike Birbiglia
#82. Even when you hear about a comedian getting married, among comedians, we're always kind of like, what are they doing?
Jim Gaffigan
#83. Even though I do a more traditional type of being funny on television, I still know a lot of comedians and stand-ups and improv actors.
Busy Philipps
#84. But I will say that most comedians are the saddest people I know. That is the biggest paradox to me.
Jean Reno
#85. I remember 9/11; we had 'Comics Come Home' about a month after those events. That night, even the comedians were concerned. Would the audience be ready to laugh? It was a release for everyone.
Denis Leary
#86. There are many comedians who are afraid to work outside the coasts and the casinos because they're afraid they'll bomb.
Elayne Boosler
#87. There are comedians who focus on everything that is external. They focus on politics and the news, what's going on in that city and that night.
Mike Birbiglia
#88. I think, first of all, I don't think people understand Ice Cube's body of work. Ice Cube is a, and I hate to use the word 'urban' but - when you think of Judd Apatow, and a person who's launched so many careers, Ice Cube has done that for so many comedians, you know?
Kevin Hart
#89. I think when I was young, let's call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved comedians. I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy. That's really a long time ago. I loved Jerry Lewis. I just loved comedians.
Steve Martin
#90. Comedians are people who say funny things, and comics are people who say things funny.
Staton Rabin
#91. Thou shalt not steal-only from other comedians.
W.C. Fields
#92. Some comedians really are funnier than others. Some people really are more beautiful than others. But these are true only because of the kinds of creatures we happen to be; the perceptual apparatus - apparati - that we happen to have.
Jonathan Haidt
#93. I like seeing comedians do stuff that I could never do.
Josh Thomas
#94. Comedians second-guessing themselves is scary. Poor taste is not a crime and we can't forget that.
Jeff Ross
#95. I found out I had a real love for comedy and comedy writing. The logic was, there weren't too many female comedians, so I thought I might as well try a field that had fewer competitors than the field I was in, which was acting, singing and dancing.
Rita Rudner
#96. Basically I try not to knock other comedians.
Robert Webb
#97. Louis C. K. is one of my all time favorite standup comedians.
Aubrey Plaza
#98. Our good time is sitting in a coffee shop with a newspaper, writing a line on the back of a napkin. That is the most fun comedians ever have
Jerry Seinfeld
#99. I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.
Chuck Palahniuk
#100. Some of the best ideas I've gotten for my act have come from comedians and not magicians.
Andrew Mayne
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