Trevor Noah Quotes & Sayings

I want to be in a position where I get to start off fresh. I don't have any preconceived notion of how I should feel. — Trevor Noah

Growing up the way I did, I learned how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that awards them all the perks. I — Trevor Noah

That's who I was. Always an outsider. As the outsider, you can retreat into a shell, be anonymous, be invisible. Or — Trevor Noah

In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren't taught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it's taught in America. In America, the history of racism is taught like this: "There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it's done." It was the same for us. "Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let's move on. — Trevor Noah

There's probably a goat hanging around - there's always a goat. — Trevor Noah

I often feel like the woman in your life is your driving force. She's your muse. She plays a big role in determining how confident you feel when you walk out the door. She can add 1,000 kilowatts of energy - or drain that out of you. She said, "No, you're not that funny." I thought, She knows better than anyone. — Trevor Noah

The name Hitler does not offend a black South African because Hitler is not the worst thing a black South African can imagine. Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that's especially true in the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium's King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson. I — Trevor Noah

We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. — Trevor Noah

There's more outrage on Twitter about a One Direction split or about what one band member said to another than there is about institutionalized racism and something huge. — Trevor Noah

Sun'qhela is a phrase with many shades of meaning. It says "don't undermine me," "don't underestimate me," and "just try me." It's a command and a threat, all at once. It — Trevor Noah

If I'm doing something on stage, and it evokes an emotion, then I might show that emotion, but I also don't believe in being a preacher. If you have a point, that's a bonus. But the funny has to come first; otherwise, you shouldn't call yourself a comedian. — Trevor Noah

As a kid I understood that people were different colors, but in my head white and black and brown were like types of chocolate. Dad was the white chocolate, mom was the dark chocolate, and I was the milk chocolate. But we were all just chocolate. — Trevor Noah

A dog is a great thing for a kid to have. It's like a bicycle but with emotions. — Trevor Noah

The hood made me realise that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn't do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programmes and part-time jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn't discriminate. — Trevor Noah

crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn't do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn't discriminate. My — Trevor Noah

My grandmother lived in Orlando East. She had a two-room house. Not a two-bedroom house. A two-room house. There was a bedroom, and then there was basically a living room/kitchen/everything-else room. Some might say we lived like poor people. I prefer "open plan. — Trevor Noah

As an outsider myself, I always mixed myself with different groups ... I've never been afraid to go into a different space and relate to those people, because I don't have a place where I belong and that means I belong everywhere. — Trevor Noah

Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people. — Trevor Noah

It's easy to be judgmental about crime when you live in a world wealthy enough to be removed from it. But the hood taught me that everyone has different notions of right and wrong, different definitions of what constitutes crime, and what level of crime they're willing to participate in. If a crackhead comes through and he's got a crate of Corn Flakes boxes he's stolen out of the back of a supermarket, the poor mom isn't thinking, 'I'm aiding and abetting a criminal by buying these Corn Flakes.' No. She's thinking, 'My family needs food and this guy has Corn Flakes', and she buys the Corn Flakes. — Trevor Noah

As a comedian, I'm forced to have a tough skin. Until people laugh, they are detractors. You walk into a new audience where nobody knows you, they go: 'Make us laugh. Show us what you're made of. Prove why we should be listening to you.' — Trevor Noah

People thought my mom was crazy. Ice rinks and drive-ins and suburbs, these things were izinto zabelungu -- the things of white people. So many people had internalized the logic of apartheid and made it their own. Why teach a black child white things? Neighbors and relatives used to pester my mom: 'Why do this? Why show him the world when he's never going to leave the ghetto?'

'Because,' she would say, 'even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I've done enough. — Trevor Noah

We've got so many different cultural groups in my family that I've had to learn to accommodate them in different ways. My father speaks different to my mum. My mum speaks different to my grandmother. Everybody speaks different, so you find you start tweaking your language to be more accessible to people. — Trevor Noah

I wasn't popular, but I wasn't an outcast. I was everywhere with everybody, and at the same time I was all by myself. — Trevor Noah

I didn't have any friends. I didn't know any kids besides my cousins. I wasn't a lonely kid - I was good at being alone. I'd read books, play with the toy that I had, make up imaginary worlds. I lived inside my head. I still live inside my head. To this day you can leave me alone for hours and I'm perfectly happy entertaining myself. I have to remember to be with people. — Trevor Noah

My mom, through my dad, rented the apartment next door to his ... he had the lease on both places. But then, she would dress up and act like his maid ... a practical maid. No fantasies. — Trevor Noah

I became a chameleon. My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you. — Trevor Noah

My own family basically did what the American justice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids. — Trevor Noah

I lost contact with my father for many years because of apartheid. For, like, six years, I didn't see my dad. And, now, this was the six years of being a teenager. — Trevor Noah

I've lived many places all over the world, so I've always seen myself as a citizen of the world. — Trevor Noah

Progression, in my opinion, is often identifying shortcomings - whether it's views or the things you're doing in your life, your relationships - and trying to find the places where you improve on those. — Trevor Noah

I'm always fascinated when people say, "We found rude conversations people had via e-mail." Why are you e-mailing this stuff? It has your signature on it! It has a time stamp! — Trevor Noah

We had a very Tom and Jerry relationship, me and my mom. She was the strict disciplinarian; I was naughty as shit. She would send me out to buy groceries, and I wouldn't come right home because I'd be using the change from the milk and bread to play arcade games at the supermarket. I loved videogames. I was a master at Street Fighter. I could go forever on a single play. I'd drop a coin in, time would fly, and the next thing I knew there'd be a woman behind me with a belt. It was — Trevor Noah

I don't know how to let loose when I'm dancing to the music and the people that made the music are watching me. I've never felt so much pressure in my life. — Trevor Noah

I shied away from any type of photograph ... because I thought I was hideous, because in my eyes I was. I had giant nodules on my face, around my neck, and the puss would ooze out of them. I had to go on medication repeatedly and the medication makes you suicidal and depressed and then you have to go off it because of your kidneys. It was just such a trying time.

In school that's your cache; how you look and what you can do determine everything in school. ... I was one of those kids who just stayed in a corner and watched the world pass them by. And I think, if anything, the biggest knock you experience in that world is - in terms of your identity - is you feel like you are less than you are, you feel like you don't have the right to belong. You're watching the world and the world exists without you. — Trevor Noah

The only authority my mother recognized was God's. God is love and the Bible is truth--everything else was up for debate. She taught me to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her. — Trevor Noah

Race mixing becomes a crime worse than treason. Humans being humans, and sex being sex, that prohibition never stopped anyone. There were mixed kids in south Africa 9 months after the first Dutch boats hit the beach at Table Bay. — Trevor Noah

But the real world doesn't go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt. And just because it's not happening to you, doesn't mean it's not happening. And at some point you have to choose; black or white, pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, oh I don't take sides, but at some point, life will force you to pick a side. — Trevor Noah

I'm not a political progressive, but I consider myself a progressive person. What makes me a progressive, in my opinion, is the fact that I try to improve myself and by large improve the world that I'm in - in the smallest way possible. — Trevor Noah

We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited. — Trevor Noah

My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage, and straight onto the stage. Two minutes, and I am on the stage. That way, in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends. — Trevor Noah

- a knowledgeable man is a free man, or at least a man who longs for freedom. — Trevor Noah

it is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider. — Trevor Noah

Catholic school is similar to apartheid in that it's ruthlessly authoritarian, and its authority rests on a bunch of rules that don't make any sense. — Trevor Noah

That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people. I — Trevor Noah

The truth is, people don't know me. When people don't know you, they're going to try to get to know you as quickly as possible, because you're now taking the place of somebody that they love dearly, or somebody that they hate sincerely, and so they need to know who you are. — Trevor Noah

People love to say, "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." What they don't say is, "And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod." That's the part of the analogy that's missing. — Trevor Noah

I've always been a fan of issues around race and racialism, and I've loved playing with it. People act as though it isn't an issue, but it's a recurring theme in our lives globally. — Trevor Noah

People don't want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have. That is the freedom of money. With — Trevor Noah

Our go-to source is no longer dictated by a small group of cable news outlets. We have to expand our view. Sometimes, a story is made and breaks on Twitter. We have to find a way to react to that, to consume and also disseminate the information from Twitter, which is not an easy thing to do. — Trevor Noah

Revenge truly is sweet. It takes you to a dark place, but, man, it satisfies a thirst. Then — Trevor Noah

I don't think I have thick skin, but I heal fast. It's easy to break through, but I heal fast. — Trevor Noah

People always lecture the poor: "Take responsibility for yourself! Make something of yourself!" But with what raw materials are the poor to make something of themselves? People — Trevor Noah

By making the choice to leave, you're insulting the place that raised you, and made you, and never turned you away. And that place fights you back. — Trevor Noah

In an American context, let's say gay rights or marriage policy - that's a progressive thing. I understand that in an American context. — Trevor Noah

Regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. "What if..." "If only... " "I wonder what would have..."

You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. — Trevor Noah

I'm a quarterback. I don't need to score the touchdown. I just need to spot the pass. — Trevor Noah

Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be a man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it's who you are. Being more of a man doesn't mean your woman has to be less than you. — Trevor Noah

None of them had cars, either. There was no future in which most of these families would ever have cars. There was maybe one car for every thousand people, yet almost everyone had a driveway. It was almost like building the driveway was a way of willing the car to happen. The story of Soweto is the story of the driveways. It's a hopeful place. - — Trevor Noah

In America the dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto. — Trevor Noah

And you must remember that black people worked for the government as well. As far as her white neighbors knew, my mom could have been a spy posing as a prostitute posing as a maid, sent into Hillbrow to inform on whites who were breaking the law. That's how a police state works - everyone thinks everyone else is the police. — Trevor Noah

Black people's dogs don't play fetch; you don't throw anything to a black person's dog unless it's food. So — Trevor Noah

That's when I realized the police were not who I thought they were. They were men first, police second. — Trevor Noah

I've never been afraid to fall in love, nor impatient to find it. — Trevor Noah

We get angry about the small things sometimes, I feel, so that we feel like we're doing something, so that we don't have to tackle the big things. And it's fine; let people do that. But I'm not gonna now change because of that. You know? Like, the worst thing that happens to me is you don't like me. And then what? — Trevor Noah

My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid - not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered. — Trevor Noah

Don't fight the system, mock the system — Trevor Noah

Nobody owns comedy. Nobody owns a premise. Nobody owns an idea. — Trevor Noah

The first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren't laughing, it's not comedy. It's as simple as that. — Trevor Noah

Most of my show is true; like, 90% of everything I say on stage is true. I just have to find the way to make it funny - that's the difficult thing. — Trevor Noah

It didn't matter that there was a war on our doorstep. She had things to do, places to be. — Trevor Noah

If you add up how much you read in a year on the Internet-tweets, Facebook posts, lists - you've read the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you've read no books in a year. — Trevor Noah

If you're Native American and you pray to the wolves, you're a savage. If you're African and you pray to your ancestors, you're a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that's just common sense. — Trevor Noah

Try being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culture while still living in the white community. You will face more hate and ridicule and ostracism than you can even begin to fathom. People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive. That is what happened to me in Eden Park. — Trevor Noah

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

When you are honest in your comedy, you have to acknowledge the world that you're in. Through a comedic voice, you're talking about what needs to be talked about, whether it's race relations or politics or anything that's happening on a global or an American scale. — Trevor Noah

I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman ... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland. — Trevor Noah

Relationships are built in the silences. You spend time with people, you observe them and interact with them, and you come to know them - and that is what apartheid stole from us: time. — Trevor Noah

When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, "I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being." That — Trevor Noah

we got to where we were, but none of it ever came from a place of self-pity. "Learn from your past and be better because of your past," she would say, "but don't cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don't hold on to it. Don't be bitter." And she never was. The deprivations of her youth, the betrayals of her parents, she never complained about any of it. Just — Trevor Noah

Comedy is a great tool. We [comics] are trying to find ways to use humor to enlighten people without preaching to them. — Trevor Noah

Abel wanted a traditional marriage with a traditional wife. For a long time I wondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she was the opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He's attracted to independent women. "He's like an exotic bird collector," she said. "He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage. — Trevor Noah

Africa's not a color - it's a place. — Trevor Noah

I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother, her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don't hold onto the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too much about the ass kicking your mom gave you or the ass kicking that life gave you, you'll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It's better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You'll have a few bruises and they'll remind you of what happened and that's ok. But after a while, the bruises fade and they fade for a reason. Because now, it's time to get up to some shit again. — Trevor Noah

Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It's a strange feeling. You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either love or hate them, but that's not how people are. — Trevor Noah

Comedy is really getting quite popular in South Africa. — Trevor Noah

The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other. Apart hate, is what is was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all. — Trevor Noah

My mom, who was only six or seven herself, used to round up the abandoned kids and form a troop and take them around to the shebeens. They'd collect empties from the men who were passed out and take the bottles to where you could turn them in for a deposit. Then my mom would take that money, buy food in the spaza shops, and feed the kids. She was a child taking care of children. When — Trevor Noah

You have two choices, two paths to take as a comedian. You can tackle the difficult subjects and be harsh about it, be brash, be abrasive. But adding hatred to racism is not going to help everybody. So I like to have fun around it. — Trevor Noah

My mom did what school didn't. She taught me how to think. — Trevor Noah

I was the first in my family to board an airplane. I was the first in my family to get kicked off an airplane. — Trevor Noah

If you laugh with somebody, then you know you share something. — Trevor Noah

He just never understood how white people could be racist in South Africa. "Africa is full of black people," he would say. "So why would you come all the way to Africa if you hate black people? If you hate black people so much, why did you move into their house?" To him it was insane. Because — Trevor Noah

I live in a country where I'd say nine out of ten people know me when I walk through the streets. There's people taking pictures, there's tabloids trying to make up stories. I'm used to that. The same thing when I'm in Australia or the U.K.: I get stopped. — Trevor Noah

Everything I have ever done I've done from a place of love. If I don't punish you, the world will punish you even worse. The world doesn't love you. If the police get you, the police don't love you. When I beat you, I'm trying to save you. When they beat you, they're trying to kill you. — Trevor Noah

In America, there is no racial segregation. I'm not sure I'm quite familiar with this phrase. — Trevor Noah

I'm not a confrontational person or comedian. I think we can explore more things if one of us is not fighting with the other. I take it easy. But I do like comedians who are very different from myself: I love dry comics with deadpan one-liners. I look on and think, 'That's amazing; why didn't I think of that?' — Trevor Noah

America is the one place in the world where I just innately understood [that] South Africa and the United States of America have a very similar history. It's different timelines, but the directions we've taken and the consequences - dealing with the aftermath of what we consider to be democracy, and realizing that freedom is just the beginning of the conversation, that's something I've learned. — Trevor Noah

When I first started doing comedy, there was no such thing as a room that had black people and white people in it. That didn't exist. — Trevor Noah

Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu schools, children were only taught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we'd fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were different. The — Trevor Noah

America was a thing I saw on TV - that wasn't a real world. That wasn't within my realm of dreaming. — Trevor Noah