John Oliver Quotes

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

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.

I think deep down, this planet yearns for the days of the British Empire again. They long once more to be treated that badly, that politely. We did far worse things than you can possibly dream of, but we did it with that certainly gentlemanly swagger... Dreadfully sorry, but we seem to have crushed your entire continent's infrastructure. Allow me to make it up to you by offering you a job 4,000 miles away. No, no, I insist.

I wanted to be a soccer player. I knew that couldn't happen.

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.

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

There is no greater anesthetic than sport.

People are friendlier in New York than London.

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.

By any rational metric, I am boring.

I think I'm just a summer fling that people will soon forget.

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

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.

If your name is Sepp, at the bare minimum you’ve strangled someone in a bar fight.

I can't relax. I find vacations problematic.

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

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

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

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

Anybody who claims to be excited for April Fools' Day is probably a sociopath.

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.

Politics has become infused with narcissism in America.

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

I would hate to meet myself at 15.

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.'

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

Net neutrality: The only two words that promise more boredom in the English language are 'featuring Sting,'

When you see people say crazy things on our show, they mean this stuff,and that's easy to forget: They're not joking.

I know I'd be an absolutely horrendous politician.

Wow. Losing 95 percent of your audience in just five years. That basically makes Obama the NBC of presidents.

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

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

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

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.

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

Sometimes it's good to remember how bad food can be, so you can enjoy the concept of flavour to the fullest.

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.

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.

Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you.

I have exactly as much rhythm as you think I have.

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.

I feel more at home knowing I'm not really at home. It takes all the pressure off you trying to fit in!

I feel non-stop Brit shame!

There are two kinds of hecklers: the destructive and constructive hecklers.

Economics is like the Dutch language - I'm told it makes sense, but I have my doubts.

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.

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

Everybody should care about facts. That is something all of us should agree on.