Trevor Noah Quotes

My mother never stagnated in a place where she said, I have it all.

I grew up in a world where authority was female. I never thought to call myself a feminist because of branding. I had this skewed idea of feminist: I thought it meant being a woman who hates men. When I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists, I was like, "Oh, this is what my mom taught me. This is simple. I don't understand why everybody is not this."

I don't even remember hearing about [Immorality Act of 1927]. I just knew about it. I was born into it, so I don't remember my parents ever saying it to me. I don't remember a conversation ever being had around this. I just knew this to be the law because that's what I was growing up in during that time in South Africa.

Here's one redeeming quality about Donald Trump. He's an equal opportunity offender.

One of the people from my online team said he didn't notice - almost immediately after the [Donald] Trump victory within the following days, he noticed that there was a severe spike in hateful messages that were coming towards me.

Twitter is a place where there is extreme vitriol at all times.

I do feel like I have a sense of the times. A lot of the things America is experiencing now, I feel like I have lived through. I think there is a cause for concern.

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.

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.

So what you do [under apartheid system] is you convince black people that the reason they are being oppressed is because there are some within their community who just can't behave. And if only they could behave, then everyone else would have more freedoms and liberties, which, of course, is not true.

I think any show has the potential to bring about social change. I do not think any one show in isolation can do it. I think it is a groundswell that needs to continue to be bolstered from all ends.

Comedy is crowded. There are hundreds of comedians in every place in the world.

It was just how my parents treated me. It was the world they decided to show me. I was really sheltered. My grandmother kept me locked in the house when I was staying, you know, with the family in Soweto. And every household, for instance, had to have a registry of everyone who lived in that house.

[My mother] wanted to go as deep as possible into the world of religion. And that took her into Judaism.

If you look at this election, I feel like Donald Trump was speaking a different language to Hillary Clinton.

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.

I don't think things are getting more insane. I do know that the country is more divided than it's ever been. Tensions in America are at their peak.

I think when you look at religion, you look at where Christianity came from. You know, my mom delved deeper into that. And she felt a deep connection.

Nelson Mandela was in jail when I was really young, and Winnie Mandela was one of the biggest faces of the movement. In South Africa we have a common phrase - it's like a chant in the street and at rallies: "Wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo." Which means, "You strike a woman, you strike a rock."

If you spoke to me in 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.

[Donald] Trump ditched his press pool. That's just stupid and funny. Get over it. You know, [Bill] Clinton ditched his press pool. This is something presidents do sometimes. Don't make everything that Trump does a scandal because what'll happen is you'll diminish the real scandals, you know? You've got to get over the fact that you hate the person and rather focus on what you're trying to do.

I had some people who disagreed with me here or there - but nothing as strong as I've received, you know, coming to America. That is the irony of life, so I guess - I always tell people - I go I feel like in a strange way, I'm home. You know, this doesn't shock me. This is just - I've come a long way to be in a place that is extremely familiar to me.