John Oliver
Comedian
1977-04-23
British and American comedian, writer, and television host known for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He previously served as a correspondent on The Daily Show.
Quotes by John Oliver
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It is going to be too easy for things to start feeling normal— especially if you are someone who is not directly impacted by his actions. So keep reminding yourself:This is not normal.Write it on a Post-It note and stick it on your refrigerator, hire a skywriter once a month, tattoo it on your ass.Because a Klan-backed misogynist internet troll is going to be delivering the next State of the Union address.And that is not normal.It is fucked up.
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It is going to be too easy for things to start feeling normal— especially if you are someone who is not directly impacted by his actions. So keep reminding yourself:This is not normal.Write it on a Post-It note and stick it on your refrigerator, hire a skywriter once a month, tattoo it on your ass.Because a Klan-backed misogynist internet troll is going to be delivering the next State of the Union address.And that is not normal.It is fucked up.
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I'm not really much of an actor, so when I started on 'The Daily Show,' I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson. Having a British accent definitely gave me a sonic leg up on that because there is a faux authority to the British accent in and of itself.
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A Southern accent is not a club in my bag.
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Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.
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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.
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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. And that's really not a good instinct with a 'Daily Show' field piece, where it's supposed to be an interview.
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The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.
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Attending a Sarah Palin rally was simultaneously one of the strangest and most chilling events of my life.
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I have occasionally - if ever I do interviews that are difficult or nerve-wracking - I take my wife's dog tags and have them in my pocket because it's a very quick way to realize that what I'm doing is not that important. It's not really worth getting stressed about because it's not, you know, war.
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Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.
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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.
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If you're asking me, would I have voted for Mitt Romney, the answer is absolutely not. Emphatically not. I cannot envision a world in which I would have voted for Mitt Romney unless I sustained a massive concussion.
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Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it.
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I've made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression.
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I can't relax. I find vacations problematic.
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Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.
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It's pretty physically unsettling, living life on a visa.
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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.
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I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.
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