Quotes & Jokes by John Oliver / page 2

32 quotes

Democracy is like a tambourine: not everyone can be trusted with it.

These are great days for exaggeration. In fact, I’ll go further than that and say these are the greatest days for exaggeration in the history of the planet Earth.

It was like falling in love with a girl who was just throwing up all over herself -- softly holding her hair back and whispering to her that everything was going to be alright. To me, that's what the last eight years were like, here in America: projectile vomiting all over yourself as the rest of the world rubbed your back, saying, 'Sssshhh, that's it. Let it all out.'

Thirty-six percent of Americans say that they've heard the voice of God. It's not clear of that 36% how many people are mistaking the voice of God for the voice of Morgan Freeman. That's an easy mistake to make.

Six months ago, in Saudi Arabia, a suicide bomber managed to get close to a Saudi prince. And he did this by hiding a bomb inside him; he managed to get explosives and a detonator inside his anus. And he detonated that bomb, killing nobody -- apart from himself -- a lot. When I first heard that story, my instinctive reaction was, that is definitely the world's greatest missed opportunity for a pull my finger joke.

It cannot be easy being a Muslim in America at the moment.... For instance, there are some people in America that cannot tell the difference between Muslims -- of which there are hundreds of millions -- and terrorists. Now, just think for a second about quite how offensive that is. That's like if the Muslim world could not differentiate between American people and professional baseball players.

Next time there's a riot somewhere in the world, don't fire tear gas at people like they're animals, just release Mike Tyson from the back of a truck so he can walk amongst the crowd and watch people jump back and part like the Red Sea going, 'Holy shit! This has gotten out of hand...'

My ideal groupie would be quite emotionally distant…

A constant question you get asked as a comedian by journalists is “when did you first realize you wanted to be a comedian?” And you never hear the honest response from people, which is, “well, when all the career dreams my parents had for me died in the gutter like a fairgrounds fish.”

One little boy turned to the kid next to him, and he said, 'I hate you.' And this kid was devastated. He started crying those only tears you can cry as a child. He was saying, 'I don't know why you hate me; I don't know what I have done to make you hate me.' And then softy, so quietly you had to strain to hear it, he said, 'Fuck.' And the first boy heard him and said, 'Hold On. Do you swear?' And he said yes, and they were friends again. Don't tell me swearing it wrong. I have seen it's healing properties.

A blonde, German woman with spiky hair...walked up to the plane and said 'There are busses outside that you will be loaded on to. You will be told what will happen to you when you reach your destination.' And all I could think in my head, was, 'I am not getting on those fucking buses. No, no, I have seen too many Oscar-winning movies. I know how this story ends. I know what you do to people who look like me. If I'm getting on any bus, it's with the blond family over there.'

British people would die for their right to drink themselves to death

This pope was born on the 16th of April, making him an Aries, compatible with both Sagittarius and Leo. But, of course, Jesus was famously a Capricorn, meaning that this pope is incompatible with Jesus. Not my findings, the findings of science. Don't get angry with me, Catholics. Go get angry with Galileo. Oh, you already did.

I'm like oysters; a few people claim they're a delicacy, but most people find the idea of putting one in their mouth disgusting.

America doesn't need libraries; you don’t need books here. There are plenty of books in the world, and plenty of people who've read them. It's not your area of expertise.... Stick to what you are truly great at -- TV.