John Oliver Quotes & Sayings

People are always going to say stupid things, and you're always going to be able to make jokes about that, but it should be the last thing you add in, because it's the easiest thing. — John Oliver

Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels. — John Oliver

Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I've ever been in. They've really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper. — John Oliver

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

Democracy is like a tamborine - not everyone can be trusted with it. — John Oliver

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

I'm British, so obviously I repress any powerful emotions of any kind in relation to anything. — John Oliver

I'm always interested in audience interaction. Not so much aggressive audience interaction - I'm genuinely interested in how people see things. — John Oliver

I get nostalgic for British negativity. There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers. When you go back to Britain, everybody is just running everything down. It's like whatever the opposite of a hug is. — John Oliver

Politics has become infused with narcissism in America. — John Oliver

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

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can. — John Oliver

Americans just don't understand dry wit. — John Oliver

I think Americans still can't help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That's why so many infomercials have British people. — John Oliver

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

We invented words; we'll tell you how they're supposed to sound. — John Oliver

There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers. — John Oliver

Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you. — John Oliver

Believe it or not the war on Iraq is based on a sound scientific principle, The bee hive principle. Which clearly states that if you are stung by a bee, you should follow it back to its nest and then proceed to beat nest to a pulp with a baseball bat until the stripey little turd has learned its lesson. — John Oliver

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

Do you know how hard it is to kill 30 million people? It's a logistical nightmare. — John Oliver

The moment I accept that there's an artistic, redeeming quality in puns, I have a horrible feeling I'll get hooked. — John Oliver

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

We in Britain stopped evolving gastronomically with the advent of the pie. Everything beyond that seemed like a brave, frightening new world. We knew the French were up to something across the Channel, but we didn't want anything to do with it. — John Oliver

Once you learn how to make people laugh, then you get to choose exactly how you want to make them laugh. — John Oliver

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

It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them. — John Oliver

I would never heckle someone. That's why I think I'm so interested in someone that would. — John Oliver

As any Brit will understand, things get a little easier when you don't have to be number one any more. Really, the fall of an empire is not as bad as everyone thinks. It's like retirement. People fear retirement, but it can turn out be rather pleasant. — John Oliver

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

It's pretty physically unsettling, living life on a visa. — John Oliver

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

One thing that America is objectively exceptional at is overreacting whenever anyone accuses them of not being exceptional. — John Oliver

Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually. — John Oliver

Whatever the occasion, [the Queen] has a face which demonstrably says 'I don't give a royal s**t.' — John Oliver

I would hate to meet myself at 15. — John Oliver

You just try to be true to your idea of what is funny and what is also interesting. — John Oliver

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

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

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

France is going to endure, and I'll tell you [ISIS people who attacked Paris ] why. If you're in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck, because go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They'll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, Marcel Proust and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend. You are fucked. — John Oliver

The German language is so sonorous, isn't it? Beautiful language ... the language of poetry. Angry, angry poetry. — John Oliver

The British press are a group of unremitting scumbags. And sometimes they use that scumbaggery to good ends, and often not. — John Oliver

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

Most stand-ups, once they have done it, think of it as their default job. I'm pretty sure Jon Stewart still feels that way now. You are a stand-up first; other things come and go. — John Oliver

Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it. — John Oliver

You're sonically racist, Americans. You think we all sound the same, whereas I have definitely a mongrel accent. — John Oliver

People are friendlier in New York than London. — John Oliver

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well. — John Oliver

It is going to be too easy for things to start feeling normal - especially if you are someone who is not directly impacted by his actions.
So keep reminding yourself:
This is not normal.
Write it on a Post-It note and stick it on your refrigerator, hire a skywriter once a month, tattoo it on your ass.
Because a Klan-backed misogynist internet troll is going to be delivering the next State of the Union address.
And that is not normal.
It is fucked up. — John Oliver

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

My first 'Daily Show' piece was pretending I had this terrible immigrant journey, so I went to talk to an immigration lawyer who would help out people, and I ran into him in Penn Station about three months after I'd gotten the green card. I said, 'I got my green card yesterday.' And he hugged me because he understood that level of relief. — John Oliver

It's a great time to be doing political satire when the world is on a knife edge. — John Oliver

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

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

Pumpkin spice lattes are egg nog for morning people. — John Oliver

According to current Florida law you can get a gun, follow an unarmed minor, call the police, have them explicitly tell you to stop following [the minor] and choose to ignore that, keep following the minor, get into a confrontation with them, and if at any point during that process you get scared you can shoot the minor to death, and the state of Florida will say, 'Well, look: you did what you could.' — John Oliver

I guess the tone of jokes is often, at best, irreverent, but it always comes from a place of deep love. — John Oliver

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

I'm British. I don't really have access to my emotions on a daily basis. — John Oliver

News is not a game show. You don't win a car if you happen to be right. — John Oliver

I knew I was going to go into the field and make fun of people to their faces. I knew what I was getting into. — John Oliver

I watch one news channel until my soul can't take it anymore. It's the background of my life. — John Oliver

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

I've made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression. — John Oliver

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

Drumpf is like a Magic 8-Ball. Every time you shake him, he gives you a different answer. — John Oliver

When you're dealing with serious subjects, there is a pressure to be absolutely sure that you know what you're doing. — John Oliver

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain. — John Oliver

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

If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing. That's generally how we speak to each other: you communicate the information between the lines of insulting sentences. — John Oliver

I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it. — John Oliver

Congratulations, Congress! 77% disapproval rating! You may be about to become the English language's most offensive C-word. — John Oliver

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

It really helps a comedian to be an outsider. — John Oliver

Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had. — John Oliver

I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy. — John Oliver

If your name is Sepp, at the bare minimum you've strangled someone in a bar fight. — John Oliver

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

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

If I wanted to take a more activist or journalistic slant in work, I should probably just go be an activist or a journalist. But I'm happy being a comedian. — John Oliver

It's exciting to have a role in anything that's Claymation, just because you're always intrigued by what a clay wizard version of yourself would be. — John Oliver

I know I'd be an absolutely horrendous politician. — John Oliver

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

If you vote for Democrats, you might as well give Al Quaeda a death ray and a manual. — John Oliver

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

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

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

There is no greater anesthetic than sport. — John Oliver

There are some people who watch NASCAR for the highly skilled driving - but most people watch it for the crashes. — John Oliver

British people would die for their right to drink themselves to death — John Oliver

I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior. — John Oliver

I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse. — John Oliver

I realize how desperate it sounds for me, as a comedian, to ask you to laugh at my jokes. — John Oliver

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

I think the best analogy for where we are right now is that America is Elvis Presley
the most beautiful, talented, rebellious nation in the history of Earth. And now, you're in your Vegas years. You've squeezed yourself into a white jumpsuit, you're wheezing your way through 'Love Me Tender' and you might be about to pass away bloated on the toilet. But you're still the King. — John Oliver

I don't think I'm identified as the anchorman, I think I'm identified as the impostor anchorman - there's a very clear line there ... I don't think it changes the way they respond. — John Oliver

Attending a Sarah Palin rally was simultaneously one of the strangest and most chilling events of my life. — John Oliver

My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American. — John Oliver

People in Britain see Richard Quest as a kind of an offensive cartoon character. — John Oliver