Top 60 W. Kamau Bell Quotes

Words matter. These are the best W. Kamau Bell Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

When we filmed the premiere episode of 'United Shades o

When we filmed the premiere episode of ‘United Shades of America,’ it was like we were turning over a rock in the woods. The KKK was not part of the national conversation. They were really just a punchline for comedians when you needed to let the audience know something was really, really, really racist.
W. Kamau Bell
I keep trying to write the crowd-pleasing slavery joke and the crowd-pleasing reparations joke, but any time you mention slavery or reparations in any detail, it seems to bum lots of people out. That’s a challenge I keep putting in front of myself.
W. Kamau Bell
People in Hollywood can condescend to the way a lot of other people are living.
W. Kamau Bell
What has happened is we’ve allowed the people who run policies in this country to sort of make us pick Left and the Right as if those are the only two choices.
W. Kamau Bell
The alt-right is working hard to cloak its desire to create chaos in the streets as free speech. They say they want to air their views, but it’s about provoking violent reactions. We all can easily see that this is not about free speech.
W. Kamau Bell
The jokes I was always attracted to, and that I would tell for the longest, were jokes where I cared about the subject. Whenever I wrote a joke where I didn’t care, even if it was really funny, the third time I told it, it would lose steam.
W. Kamau Bell
Capitalism doesn’t care about sentimentality.
W. Kamau Bell
That’s how to make a stand-up comedian: You take a person who is uncomfortable and try to squirrel their way out of it through humor.
W. Kamau Bell
The downside to defining everything Chinese as different than American is that all things Chinese then become exotic.
W. Kamau Bell
Most prisons in this country are in the middle of nowhere, which makes it much easier for us all to throw those people away. Out of sight, out of mind.
W. Kamau Bell
I’m happy that I know how to speak ‘Southern.’ I spent a lot of time in Alabama throughout my life. I even lived there for part of junior high and high school, so I learned the true beauty and mastery of the Southern dialect. ‘Y’all’ is one of the greatest and most useful words ever invented.
W. Kamau Bell
My agenda… is to learn about people.
W. Kamau Bell
If we go the direction that many of the leaders of this country want and close the borders and discourage new immigrants, then we are ruining the possibility of new ideas and new experiences.
W. Kamau Bell
America, the self-described greatest nation on Earth, has the highest incarceration rate on the planet.
W. Kamau Bell
I feel like, as a black guy, I can’t not believe in God… I’d wake up in the morning, ‘I’m black, and there’s no God? I’m going back to sleep.’
W. Kamau Bell
We all need to make sure that we fully understand our country.
W. Kamau Bell
I just want to make TV that I want to see.
W. Kamau Bell
Shouldn’t one of the goals of prison be getting as many of the inmates as possible back out into the world to be responsible citizens? Aren’t we just wasting generations of human potential by keeping over two million people behind bars?
W. Kamau Bell
Most people have the ability to turn their empathy engine back on, but there’s such a seductive burn to not being empathetic.
W. Kamau Bell
When Arnold Schwarzenegger was pronouncing it ‘Cal-LEE-fornia,’ he was right – he just didn’t realize he was accidentally speaking Spanish.
W. Kamau Bell
I’ve been to the Bahamas. It’s a beautiful country with truly excellent people. When I took a cruise that docked for a couple hours in Nassau, it mostly reminded me of a giant version of my grandmother’s neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama… but with better accents.
W. Kamau Bell
When ‘Totally Biased’ was canceled, I thought my career was over – but apparently it wasn’t.
W. Kamau Bell
Chicago is a world-class city filled with amazing people with big ideas.
W. Kamau Bell
The big thing I learned from Chris Rock was not to be a victim of show business. Don’t let show business push you around.
W. Kamau Bell
No state income tax, no snow, lots of golf courses, and ready-made gated communities make Florida an irresistible place for seniors – the ones who have the income level – to retire.
W. Kamau Bell
I’ve always been a fan of these travel shows and documentary series.
W. Kamau Bell
I grew up in a household where we talked about race all the time, and that’s sort of in me. So if I become the Anthony Bourdain of race and culture, then great!
W. Kamau Bell
Comedy can be very deep sometimes.
W. Kamau Bell
In the deep corner of my heart, I’m a Chicagoan, but it’s been covered over by 20 years of living in the Bay Area.
W. Kamau Bell
The day-to-day discomforts of prison life, combined with the big-picture realities of mass incarceration, do not add up to a party.
W. Kamau Bell
Women don’t get the benefits of America the way men do.
W. Kamau Bell
We really suffer from a hot-take disease, wanting to be

We really suffer from a hot-take disease, wanting to be the first one who has the hottest take.
W. Kamau Bell
The Right doesn’t usually threaten to leave the country. When the Right feels threatened, it just declares it is going to invent a time machine to take the country back so that America can be ‘great again.’
W. Kamau Bell
You don’t get smarter by not learning stuff.
W. Kamau Bell
I want to write the reparations joke that makes people go, ‘Yay! I’m so happy!’ It’s easy to go onstage and just make fun of all the ‘isms’ instead, but we can’t all be Jeff Dunham. Although that pays very well… it pays way better to be Jeff Dunham than it ever paid to be George Carlin or Lenny Bruce.
W. Kamau Bell
America loses so much of what defines it if you subtract the Chinese influence. I know this because I spent 12 years living in one of America’s most popular tourist destinations: San Francisco. And it would not be one of America’s top tourist destinations without Chinatown.
W. Kamau Bell
When we let cops talk about themselves as a separate community, then we are letting cops wall themselves off from the rest of us. We don’t generally do that with any other jobs. We don’t talk about the barista community or the Wal-Mart greeter community.
W. Kamau Bell
The Olympics are great, but they only truly mean something when the moments that come out of them are bigger than the individual sports.
W. Kamau Bell
The history of Oregon is partially the history of a state that legislated not wanting black people around.
W. Kamau Bell
I want President Obama to want to take your guns away. I don’t trust you with your guns. I don’t trust you to fire them safely. I don’t trust you to store them safely. I don’t trust your kids not to find them. I don’t trust you not to get them stolen.
W. Kamau Bell
For some people, the definition of who is and who isn’t an American defies logic, historical accuracy, common sense, decency, good manners, the milk of human kindness, enjoyment in the good things in life, and love of good food.
W. Kamau Bell
The country should be more inclusive, not less inclusive, and over an infinite timeline, it becomes more inclusive. It doesn’t always happen at once.
W. Kamau Bell
Since its inception, the government has broken and coerced treaties with hundreds of Native American tribes. And this is even worse when you realize that the native peoples of this land are negotiating for land that is, by all common sense and elementary school logic, their land.
W. Kamau Bell
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be one of the indigenous people of the United States of America. I can’t imagine watching the news every day – as people debate whose country this is and who should be in charge of it and how to make it great again – and hardly ever see your people brought into the discussion.
W. Kamau Bell
As a black person in this country, I am always frustrated by the lack of attention my people’s issues get. But at least the news and politicians are talking about not talking about our issues. Native issues are basically ignored.
W. Kamau Bell
If you say, ‘I don’t care if Muhammad Ali was a Muslim or not; he was just great,’ what you’re really saying is, ‘I don’t care about Muhammad Ali.’ Same with Prince being black.
W. Kamau Bell
You can be as exclusive as you want to in your house, but once you walk outside your house, you have to realize that it’s not your world anymore: it’s all of our world.
W. Kamau Bell
I like living in Berkeley, but I know Berkeley’s not the world.
W. Kamau Bell
As much as some people like to put down ‘political correctness,’ if it wasn’t for political correctness, I wouldn’t be free right now.
W. Kamau Bell
Throughout my career and my life, I talk a lot about racism in this country, and if you’re going to talk about it, then you’re going to eventually come to the chapter about the Klan.
W. Kamau Bell
No comedian grows up thinking, ‘I hope one day to have a show on CNN.’
W. Kamau Bell
In most major cities, you can find stores for urban homesteaders. They sell everything you need so that you won’t need anything. Sort of a ‘Take This Civilization and Shove It’ starter kit.
W. Kamau Bell
When things aren’t going well for black people, they blame the government. When things aren’t going well for white people, they can’t blame the government because the government is supposed to be for them. So they blame black people.
W. Kamau Bell
The alt-right is the Tea Party’s younger, cooler, meaner brother. Like if the movie ‘Back to The Future’ was just about Biff.
W. Kamau Bell
Growing up in the Midwest, Boston, and Alabama, I didn’t know any Puerto Ricans… at least, I didn’t know if I knew any Puerto Ricans. The only Puerto Rican that I had ever even heard of was Juan Epstein, one of the students from the classic 1970s sitcom ‘Welcome Back, Kotter.’
W. Kamau Bell
As a comedian, you see all parts of the country because you play there.
W. Kamau Bell
I’m just another non-native whose mom told him we were part-Cherokee.
W. Kamau Bell
This is a country that was founded on racism. It was built on racism. It still continues to thrive through wealth disparity, and housing disparity is all built on the backs of racism.
W. Kamau Bell