Top 230 Comedians Quotes

I love mixing with comedians when I’m working with them, but when I’m not I don’t feel the need to hang around with them.

I always think all the other comedians in New York hate me – I’m just convinced that they all dislike me – when, generally, I think I’m a pretty well-respected guy.

When I did ‘Bremner, Bird and Fortune’ I think it was accepted that comedians can contest the arguments just as well as journalists.

I definitely relate so much to a lot of women in comedy, but I don’t love segregating the genders. I’m just as influenced by male comedians as I am female comedians.

I can wax boringly about the role of comedy in mitigating pain. For so many comedians, comedy comes out of personal despair. I’m not a very despairing person myself, but I do fear despair and the death of loved ones.

When I see a good singer, I get teary-eyed. Part of it is jealousy because all comedians are frustrated rock stars. That’s a fact.

We judge people based on their clothes, social class, and, dare I say, ethnicity. Our comedians make light of these stereotypes regularly, and we laugh at their accuracy.

I think a lot of studios today are run by women, and we are entering a time when a lot of women have evolved in Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade and wanted to become writers and comedians.

A lot of my family members were performers, and my cousins are comedians and actresses. From a very young age, movies were really important. They were given a lot of value.

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.

I’ve been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled.

Many comedians have a dark side that lets them take a negative thing and turn it funny.

There are comedians who focus on everything that is external. They focus on politics and the news, what’s going on in that city and that night.

I sometimes think of not doing Twitter or Facebook anymore, but that’s how people find their favorite bands and comedians.

I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts of American comedians talking to each other.

It’s always impressive when talented comedians are easy laughers or generous with their laughs.

One of the things I’ve found about SpongeBob’s movement style is that, in addition to being animated and sort of stretching and squeezing, he’s really based on the classic silent comedians, physical comedians.

I used to devour a lot of stand-up comedy in my cousin’s basement. He had cable and I didn’t, so I went there and saw all the comedians.

All the people I looked up to – Roseanne, Tim Allen, and Jerry Seinfeld – were stand-up comedians who used humor to get TV shows. I’m on TV now, and I’m working towards getting my own show.

Not saying that we are realer than most people, but because Chi is so segregated, first of all, we have to be diverse comedians and be able to make a lot of different people laugh. And Chicago comics, we’re OK with who we are in our truth. That stems from Bernie Mac and a lot of other greats who came before me.

A lot of comedians, when they have a bad gig, will blame everything but themselves. They’ll blame the crowd, or the room was wrong, it had a weird vibe, or the promoter promoted a weird atmosphere.

When the cricket is serious and it’s a really important time in the middle we focus on that but obviously when it isn’t there is a lot of time to chat and we can use that as time to bring the comedians in a bit more. We get the balance right between getting the calling of the cricket right but having some fun as well.

I dropped out of school when I was 14 and I was hanging out with comedians in their thirties. I moved out of home and had some real lows.

I don’t think comedians are better travellers but they are communicators and storytellers.

When a lot of people are distrusting the news they watch, comedians are stepping up talking about things that most people are too afraid to talk about, shining light on problems nobody else will admit, whether it’s Samantha Bee or John Oliver or Trevor Noah.

As far as I can tell, comedians are pretty serious people, and that’s why they make fun of things all of the time.

Comedians have to entertain the audience within a stipulated time. It is not possible to explain what we intend to convey in a detailed manner. This can only be done in films where comedians are the protagonists.

You know the quickest way to get comedians to hate you? Do Letterman at age 24.

Every time I’ve done comedy in, like, traditional comedy clubs, there’s always these comedians that do really well with audiences but that the other comedians hate because they’re just, you know, doing kind of cheap stuff like dancing around or doing, like, very kind of base sex humor a lot, and stuff like that.

Something I always admire, especially in female comedians, is that they’re willing to make themselves look terrible.

My favorite comedians are basically themselves onstage.

I read in the ‘Daily Mail’ that I’m one of these ‘foul-mouthed comedians.’ But I’m much cleaner than the people they like. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to think that a 70-year-old – particularly someone like Alan Bennett – would like it, because they’ve seen a lot of stuff.

I am on Facebook, but it’s mainly for friends and family, so it’s not my real name. But I am on Twitter a lot. I resisted it for so long, but I love it because I get to connect with people I look up to – actors, comedians, and singers.

I know comedians who go on weird day trips in order to have random experiences they can talk about. They’ll go on their own to Thorpe Park waiting for something hilarious to happen. That’s really sad.

When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians – Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I’d go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I’d seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.

I think comedians have a function in society, which is to make fun of our icons.

The Internet has done nothing but good for comedy all around. Comedians no longer have to rely on TV execs and club owners deciding if they are funny or not.

I don’t consider myself a comedian, but you work with some comedians, and sometimes these guys are incredible on their feet – it’s just amazing – and that’s not what I do. But it’s always fun, and I don’t really care as long as the character is interesting.

The black comedians meeting? Oh yeah, we hold one every year at Eddie Murphy’s house.

You learn to laugh at yourself, and you also lean on comedy as a crutch to kind of take the edge off because comedians often are self-deprecating, and they cross lines that they shouldn’t. Stuff like that brings a smile to my face every once in a while when needed.

There is a cliche that probably has some anecdotal evidence on the side that comedians are very depressed people, but that’s because no one is ever going to seem as funny in a normal conversation as compared to when they’re up there onstage in the spotlight making a huge audience keel over with laughter.

There’s a lot of theaters in New York. You can always go out and be around a lot of like-minded comedians.

Mimicry artistes and comedians are supposed to incorporate incidents around him in his acts in a satirical way. For that, he should be well aware about the things happening around him.

I think comedians see themselves as people among people.

Successful comedians are just as neurotic as I am.

Half of the great comedians I’ve had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn’t understand why they were funny to anybody.

It’s famous that comedians have a very dark personal state of mind. I think, in my case, it’s the same. The only way to get deep is to have a balance, or a counterbalance.

In New York I was taken to a restaurant where comedians gather. There were 14 who imitate me in their acts. They wanted me to give them pointers.

People think comedians don’t do drama. Comics are drama. And what is drama, as opposed to comedy? It’s all the same to me.

Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.

Most actors can’t write. Most writers can’t act. Most comedians can’t act. I can do all three, so why wouldn’t I do that?

The comedians I liked were Bill Cosby and Steven Wright, like just always as a comedic actor. I always liked Gary Larson, who’s really funny for a cartoonist, obviously.

Everybody kind of looks to comedians and comedy for relief and a fresh breath about what is going on in the world.

As comedians, we work our whole lives hoping for a break.

The best comedians and the best rappers can make you laugh and can make you cry… I believe I’ve been blessed with that gift to make you do just that.