The Comedian Quotes

#1. Suddenly, the world I had scrutinised for so long was all around me, as if I had leaned forward and climbed into the television like Alice through the looking-glass. I had no idea just how deep the rabbit hole would go.

Simon Pegg

#2. Many old music hall fans were present at the funeral today of Fred 'Chuckles' Jenkins, Britain's oldest and unfunniest comedian. In tribute, the vicar read out one of Fred's jokes, and the congregation had two minutes silence.

Ronnie Barker

#3. 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

#4. Is he seriously joking with me? The master of the dark art of raising the dead has become a standup comedian? Surely this is the end of the world.

David Estes

#5. I don't have a lot of recreation time. I've always been under the assumption that if you're selling tickets you need to work. The kind of success that's happened to me maybe only happens to one comedian every twenty years and so I'm on the road constantly.

Larry The Cable Guy

#6. I'd sooner go through with a pregnancy than spend a night alone in my house knowing there was a snake in the yard.

Chelsea Handler

#7. When you're a comedian, the Holy Grail is an hour long HBO special.

Gabriel Iglesias

#8. Bombing teaches you how badly you want to become a comedian. Because unless it's a burning desire, you'll quit when the consistent bombing becomes too much to take.

Franklyn Ajaye

#9. When people laugh at me, they are not laughing in the way that they normally would at a comedian. They are laughing with relief, because the truth has been spoken, and political correctness has not strangled this particular gigastar.

Barry Humphries

#10. You're so hilarious. You know, if this whole Daimon-slaying gig doesn't work out for you, you should really consider being a comedian. The bright Barney hair color would just add to the overall entertainment factor.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#11. If you watch the arcs of so many comedians, at some point, they just become themselves.

Judd Apatow

#12. The worst thing that can happen to a comedian is to do a documentary on your life and you're watching it with an audience and there's not a laugh.

David Steinberg

#13. I talk about stuff like my Blackberry, Lost, the internet, music, etc. so I guess that leads to the "nerd" moniker. But I don't get it that much to be honest. I guess its better than being labeled a "racist" comedian.

Aziz Ansari

#14. The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

Lenny Bruce

#15. I tell people all the time, as I was going through my process of being a comedian or being an actor and a writer at 'SNL,' I tell people that everything you do is all a piece of your puzzle to determine where you're going to end up at.

J. B. Smoove

#16. I used to have a theory actually that, if you've had a good childhood, a good marriage and a little bit of money in the bank, you're going to make a lousy comedian.

David Steinberg

#17. Contrary to what certain comedians have led you to believe, the national French pastime is picnicking.

Bob Hope

#18. I'm a lot smarter and thoughtful of a comedian. This market is different than it was. You don't have to have cable to hear this comedy. It comes on a basic channel, and that's one of the biggest differences between now than when I first started.

Joe Torry

#19. I like seeing what the comedian thinks is funny, not just what they think I'll think is funny.

Anthony Jeselnik

#20. I became a guy who wanted to be a comedian someday, or a comic actor. The way I put it was, I'll be like Danny Kaye. He was kind of the model I had in mind.

George Carlin

#21. I worry about my judgment when anything I believe in or do regularly begins to be accepted by the American public.

George Carlin

#22. My mom is very good at being passive-aggressive, and my Dad is a total wiseass, so I think the mixture of the two of them is my comedy. But, I am definitely the first comedian in my family.

Amy Schumer

#23. I came from a very different sort of background and pedigree from the people who were on "The Daily Show". I was an actor. I was sort of - the irony is that I've done as much dramatic work in my career as comedic work and I don't really think of myself as a comedian.

Aasif Mandvi

#24. I think there is a weird loneliness that comes with being a comedian. There is something definitely inside the personality of a person who wants to be a comedian, and (he or she) is looking to connect (to the audience) at all times.

Chris Gethard

#25. I always stayed away from political commentary. First of all, I didn't feel entitled. What I may feel about a candidate, I'm a comedian. I mean, if people like my comedy, that doesn't mean they should vote for the person I like. That's why I always kind of stayed away from endorsements.

Bob Newhart

#26. Comedians on the stage are invariably suicidal when they get home.

Elsa Lanchester

#27. That's one thing about my shows. I tell people, I'm not a comedian, I'm just a really funny reporter. I put my life out there and make it entertaining. By putting it out there, it helps me to deal with it, you know, so I don't snap and so I don't go off the handle when I get home.

Gabriel Iglesias

#28. 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

#29. I started doing stand-up at the age of 20. This was back in 1976, around the time (coincidence?) that the first comedy clubs were starting. The young comedians of today gasp when I tell them how many shows I did that first year: 500. Five nights a week.

Emo Philips

#30. The role of the comedian is to say 'Wait a minute' when a consensus starts to form.

Bill Hicks

#31. A good competition for comedians would be where a comedian has a conversation and is then quizzed on what the other person says.

Dana Gould

#32. The key to comedy is commitment - if you're afraid, you shouldn't be a comedian.

Nick Swardson

#33. I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.

Al Pacino

#34. That's the beauty of being a comedian - it's the one job you're allowed to do that. We're lucky. We're really lucky.

Colin Quinn

#35. I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand-up. I don't tell jokes. I'm a comedic actor, and approach my work that way. The comedy comes through the character.

Eugene Levy

#36. Those who say that Serena isn't serious about tennis; she wants to go Hollywood. That's true, about Hollywood. I would love to get a lot of acting gigs. But you wouldn't believe the stuff I've turned down because of my tournament schedule ... I would do well beside (comedian) Chris Tucker.

Serena Williams

#37. I've never set out to write a funny movie or be a funny comedian as a woman. I am a woman. I don't really have a choice in the matter. My goal is just to be funny.

Maya Rudolph

#38. Ricky Gervais would have you believe otherwise, but Sacha Baron Cohen is the most successful British comedian in the world.

David Walliams

#39. Every comedian is just doing the comedy they find funny. This is me and it's not clean in any way. I could get a lot more work on TV playing clean but it's never interesting.

Jim Jefferies

#40. A stand-up comedian will never be the life of a party. Instead, he will be the guy who is standing at a corner and observing people.

Vir Das

#41. Many comedians consider themselves to be cutting edge. But why do we have to use the knife for the analogy. Let's use the spoon. I like to consider myself the big bowl-like area of the spoon that holds all the stuff you like.

Brian Regan

#42. ...that's the nature of marine life and the inland bays I grew up on. You'd have to be a scientist, a poet and a comedian to hope to describe it all accurately, and even then you'd often fall short.

Jim Lynch

#43. Because that's what it would catch in the wild, a boar, right? I can't wait to see a pack of bunnycats take down a wild hog with those short tiny legs. Wouldn't the boar be surprised?"
Everybody was a comedian.
"May be if I oink loud enough, it'll leap across the beam and try to devour me.

Ilona Andrews

#44. The tragedian will always be a limited tragedian if he has not learned how to laugh. The comedian who cannot weep will never touch the highest levels of mirth.

Ellen Terry

#45. If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.

Steve Allen

#46. As the comedian Emo Phillips once said, "When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realized that God doesn't work in that way - so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness!

Daniel C. Dennett

#47. My only goal as a comedian was to stomp the life out of the model-minority myth.

Eddie Huang

#48. 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

#49. John was the smartest and most amazing comedian I've ever worked with. I think more than teaching me about acting or comedy, he taught me about life and the love of people and respect of people.

Kaley Cuoco

#50. Some of the best ideas I've gotten for my act have come from comedians and not magicians.

Andrew Mayne

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

Kliph Nesteroff

#52. 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

#53. I was influenced by every comedian I ever saw work. That's the only way you learn how to do it.

Bob Newhart

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. I live in South Africa. I'm proud to live there. I've always said I want to be a comedian from South Africa in the world. I will stay in places for a bit here and there and pop into New York for a while, maybe stay in London for a year, but my home will always be South Africa. I enjoy it too much.

Trevor Noah

#57. I also could see myself as a stand-up comedian, a fashion designer (for people of all sizes), a hairdresser, an earnest and eventually burnt-out politician, or the owner of a small bistro. But I fear that, without poetry, I would have simply been going through the motions.

Denise Duhamel

#58. 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

#59. I never really saw myself as a standup comedian. I always just thought of myself as someone who used the eight minutes or 10 minutes she was allotted and had a blast.

Kristen Schaal

#60. 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

#61. We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

Fred Allen

#62. A comedian, or any artist, needs their time to develop what they are doing. There has to be some respect for the art form and when it's allowed to be seen.

Keenen Ivory Wayans

#63. I don't think anyone's particularly conscious of thinking suits are the thing, but when you see a comedian on stage in jeans and a t-shirt it doesn't matter how good they are - it always looks like amateur hour when they walk onto the stage.

Jack Dee

#64. 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

#65. The whole idea of celebrity is flattering - it helps you get into restaurants and stuff - but once you obtain some creative fulfillment, which you do on a nightly basis as a comedian, it's hard to give that up just to be the wacky neighbor on a show.

Jim Gaffigan

#66. Well, anybody can be a straight man if he hears well. You just have to wait for laughs. A straight man just repeats the questions and the comedian gets the laughs and you just wait for them and don't let them die completely at the tail end of the laugh.

George Burns

#67. 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.

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. I have not moved out of the comedian's box into the news box. The news box is moving towards me.

Jon Stewart

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. 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

#77. The idea of a Japanese comedian was not only a rarity, it was non-existent.

Pat Morita

#78. I hate when comedians use Performed For The Troops as one of there credits before they go up on stage.

Felipe Esparza

#79. I put a new engine in my car, but forgot to take the old one out. Now my car goes 500 miles per hour. The harmonica sounds amazing.

Steven Wright

#80. Luckily, I'm not a stand-up comedian, so I don't get the fear of standing on stage in front of a dead audience: my humorous pieces have to make it past an editor before they get exposed to the public.

Charles Stross

#81. The problem is you make the tricks look good. You are a brilliant acrobat, and a witty comedian. You are skillful. People want a fool to be foolish
trip on banana peels and grin and spout nonsense. These men want fools to make them feel better about themselves, not to remind them what they lack.

Kelli Swofford Nielsen

#82. Before I was a comedian, I thought the coolest thing that would happen to me was to be a teenager. Boy, was I wrong.

Chris Rock

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

David Steinberg

#84. 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

#85. When you do late-night TV, you do different jokes in the same place every night. When you're on the road as a comedian, you do the same jokes in a different place every night.

Jay Leno

#86. Maybe it's because I come from a very utopian world of being a comedian, but I'm used to many live comedy performances going on in any city I'm in, and each of us is trying to be the best at what we do. I don't think of it as a competition so much as a thriving comedy economy.

Trevor Noah

#87. Your average comedian doesn't know the podcast universe, really.

Scott Aukerman

#88. Richard Pryor introduced me to the world of the inner city, and the urban world, and did it hysterically. My favorite comedian, even though we work 180 degrees differently, but funny is funny is funny.

Bob Newhart

#89. To be No. 1 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list, well, that's alarming. Having been a stand-up comedian, I think it's surprising to a lot of people that I had the insight I had.

Steve Harvey

#90. I am the smartest comedian in the history of the world.

Andy Kindler

#91. If you make a bad movie about stand-up, then comedians will mock you for the rest of your life.

Judd Apatow

#92. Every comedian comes to a fork in the road where they have to decide if they're going to make jokes about other people or make jokes about themselves. I chose myself.

Mike Birbiglia

#93. It may sound surprising, but a joke and a crime novel work in very much the same way. The comedian/writer leads their audience along the garden path. The audience know what's coming, or at least they think they do until they get hit from a direction they were not expecting.

Mark Billingham

#94. No comedian's wife thinks he's funny. The first few years of the marriage, maybe. I was funny as hell the first couple of years.

Tom Smothers

#95. I actually was a writer who had the ability to perform his own work as opposed to a comedian who wrote his own material. So that really made me happy and changed my whole perspective.

George Carlin

#96. Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

H.L. Mencken

#97. The whole country was tied together by radio. We all experienced the same heroes and comedians and singers. They were giants.

Woody Allen

#98. I'm a comedian so I'm not waiting around for someone to write a part for me. I don't have to wait for somebody else to create my next job; I have the ability to basically write my own ticket.

Wanda Sykes

#99. Podcasts feature comedians being as funny as they can be in a non-censored situation. It's really akin to standup in a way. When you go see a comedian in standup, that is the most pure, unadulterated form of their art.

Scott Aukerman

#100. I wish I had the guts and talent to be a good comedian. I love the idea of it, yet I'm terrified of it. I'd also love to play music in front of people.

Charlie Rowe