Words matter. These are the best Adam Conover Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Late 19th-century America was basically a plutocratic enterprise while people toiled in mines and died of coal dust poisoning.
I see myself as an avatar of curiosity and doubt.
I can’t think of another place other than TV where a five-person sketch comedy group could make a living.
I’m a naturally curious person.
I have a lot of family in Marquette. I’m way more familiar with the U.P. than I am with the lower peninsula. I’ve visited Michigan every couple of years since I was a kid.
The brutal fact is that which foods are available in your grocery store is determined by trade wars, agriculture policy, and the outsized power wielded by large corporations.
Employ empathy.
I’ve always been kind of an information sponge.
The Daily Show’ was really a turning point, where people started to realize that comedy can have a true cultural impact and can have something to say that is serious.
I am not an educator and I’m not a journalist. I am a comedian. But I do truly believe that the point of comedy is to make the world around one better.
In philosophy you’re never 100% sure. You’re always undermining what you think you know. That’s always been my philosophy and my intellectual ethos.
I find that I have a lot of suppressed energy when I’m on a plane for a long period so when I’m holding a fidget spinner, being able to play with it and just sort of run my hands over it helps me out quite a lot; it helps me relax.
In a live setting, the audience is trapped and can’t leave. That really makes the audience be with you and laugh more because you’re there.
I want people to know the truth. That’s what drives me. That there is truth in the world to know, and once you know it, you have a responsibility to share it.
Your date of birth is a security point for identity theft.
That’s something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.
A lot of the language about Millennials is extremely gendered.
I went to Bard College, which was a really interesting synthesis of a hippie school and a serious academic institution. It was really the perfect spot for me.
What people say about millennials is the same thing they’ve said about every generation: Younger people are obsessed with technology, and selfish, and they’re lazy, and they live with their parents… Guess what? That’s ’cause they’re young people!
I want to do stories that are about the bits of cultural furniture that are sitting there that we’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s been there for years! What could possibly be weird about it?’ And then we’re going to lift that piece of furniture and look at all the bugs scurry away.
The idea that you must bathe every day is, to a certain extent, a manufacture on the part of the soap industry.
People are so quick to demonize and stereotype those on the other side that they often say that it’s impossible to work with people on the other side.
I’m the only member of my family who didn’t get a PhD. So, I’m like the failure of the family, cause all I have is a bachelor’s, like a drop out.
No one who hired Siegfried & Roy was shocked when they brought a tiger onstage. So you shouldn’t be shocked if you book a comedian and she points out that the emperor has no clothes.
All my life I have been the guy who always says, ‘Oh I think I read a thing about that and you know it’s actually true about that is yada yada.’ The reaction that I got when I would do that from people when I did that was not always good.
I wrote for this sketch group called Olde English for about six years and we made a movie together, but we sort of stopped making sketches.
At any point, the sum total of human knowledge is not, ‘Here’s the world as it is perfectly,’ it’s, ‘Here’s the best we know so far and we’re always willing to be proven wrong.’
I find that a really restful, relaxing way to spend time on a plane is to listen to an audiobook while drawing.
I loved ‘Beakman’s World’ growing up. As much as I loved ‘Bill Nye,’ I always preferred ‘Beakman’s World’ because I thought it was funnier.
Growing up as a comedian the most influential person on me was Jon Stewart. He showed that comedy could have a real tangible effect on the world. He showed that comedy could move the needle of society and that a comic can do real things and make a real contribution.
I think that veganism is a totally great choice with incredible benefits, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect other people to be vegan or to expect everybody to be vegan. You can proselytize all you want, but being vegan is a pretty intense choice for a lot of people.
Narcissism is a fact of life – it’s a natural part of growing older, right? It’s a part of your development. So being angry about the younger generation being ‘narcissistic,’ that’s like saying ‘Oh, this young generation only wants to poop in their diaper! They don’t want to use the bathroom!’
I consider myself to be doing comedy in a post-Jon Stewart world to a certain extent.
I think the best comedy enlightens, informs, and changes the way people look at the world.
The truth is, people love to learn.
There is nothing better than getting to just dig in and seriously play a video game for a six-hour flight from New York to L.A.
I had the benefit of going to a really good high school on Long Island. I went to Shoreham-Wading River High School, which kind of started as an experimental public school back in the 60s and 70s. It had a bunch of teachers there with a unique teaching philosophy.
Security theater is the idea of putting on a big show of security in order to make people feel safe. That’s why the TSA screens everything and takes your stuff away.
As a comedian, I am attracted to truths that are uncomfortable. I like funny bummers.
Some people are writers and don’t ever want to be on camera, some people act and not write – I like writing words for myself to say.
It’s only when you get towards the top that people start throwing you down a rope. It’s like a law of nature, and it makes me think a lot about what my responsibility is to folks who are further down the hole where I was – how I can offer them help and how I can try to help change the structure of American society.
I don’t claim to have all the answers; after all, I’m just a comedian who reads a lot.
The journalistic and political classes are very eager to borrow the cultural authority of comedians when it suits them, sending out gala invitations and posing for photos in hopes that a bit of that edgy satirical shine will rub off on them.
Listen more than you speak.
