Stephen Colbert Quotes

I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time, that I used to be a professional ice-skater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am?

I’m very comfortable with uncomfortable situations, and I think that can seem odd to people, that I like the thrill of discomfort.

I started as a straight actor. I’d go onstage, and I’d think, ‘Wow, this is the only thing I want to work really hard at. I will rehearse fifty times on a single scene; I don’t care – I’ll do it again.’

You shouldn’t listen to us at all if you’re looking for information. We don’t take ourselves seriously on any level; we’re just comedians.

In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter.

We have this idea in our minds that there’s this separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. And we extend that to our politics – not just church and state, but it’s also there’s a separation of religion and politics. But of course there isn’t.

I’m an actor. I hate to blow everyone’s illusions.

Who really wants to be themselves when they’re teenagers?

In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant. One motto on the show is, ‘Keep your facts, I’m going with the truth.’

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn’t like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.

If I had free time to go to Los Angeles to shoot a movie, I would rather spend it with my kids.

I like to do things that are publicly embarrassing, to feel the embarrassment touch me and sink into me and then be gone. I like getting on elevators and singing too loudly in that small space. The feeling you feel is almost like a vapor. The discomfort and the wishing that it would end that comes around you.

I don’t like books, they’re all fact, no heart.

Simply being a guest on David Letterman’s show has been a highlight of my career. I never dreamed that I would follow in his footsteps, though everyone in late night follows Dave’s lead. I’m thrilled and grateful that CBS chose me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go grind a gap in my front teeth.

The truthiness is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news ‘at’ you.

Thankfully, dreams can change. If we’d all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses.

I have tender feelings for Nixon because everybody has warm feelings about their childhood. Actually, I didn’t like the Watergate trials ’cause they interrupted ‘The Munsters.’

When I got to ‘The Daily Show,’ they asked me to have a political opinion. It turned out that I had one, but I didn’t realize quite how liberal I was until I was asked to make passionate comedic choices as opposed to necessarily successful comedic choices.

I wrote things for the school’s newspaper, and – like all teenagers – I dabbled in poetry.

I do love my country. I don’t think I’m particularly a good American. I don’t know what makes a good American. Other than somebody who – I like people who let other people alone. I think that’s a pretty good American. And I keep my hands to myself. So I’m an OK American.

I’m a junkie for exhaustion, and I’m a junkie for setting up my expectations too high and then trying to meet them.

I am highly variable in my devotion. From a doctrinal point of view or a dogmatic point of view or a strictly Catholic adherent point of view, I’m first to say that I talk a good game, but I don’t know how good I am about it in practice.

I’m not here to affect you politically or socially. I’m here to make you laugh. I use the news as the palette for my jokes.

I not only loved studying theater, I loved being a theater major. It gave me an excuse to brood, to grow a beard, to wear black ‘at’ people. I didn’t just want to play Hamlet, I wanted to be Hamlet.

When my car runs out of gas, I buy a new one. I don’t want to ride around in a quitter.

I have a mug that actually verifies that I’m the world’s best dad. That’s a mug. That’s not me talking. You can’t just buy those.

All I can do is today and tomorrow and have some idea of what we’re doing next week. That’s all I can worry about.

I have a morality. I don’t know if it’s the best morality. And I do like thinking. If people perceive that as a moral intellectualism, that’s fine. That’s up to them to decide.

I can’t prove it, but I can say it.

If you don’t give power to the words that people throw at you to hurt you, they don’t hurt you anymore. And you actually have power over those people.

My favorite off-camera memory of Jon Stewart is watching him jump from the second level of a tuna tower into the waters off Grand Cayman.

My father always wanted to be ‘Col-bear.’ He lived in the same town as his father, and his father didn’t like the idea of the name with the French pronunciation. So my father said to us, ‘Do what you want. You’re not going to offend anybody.’ And he was dead long before I made my decision.

I liked comedy as a kid. When I was a kid, I’d go to sleep to, like, Bill Cosby albums every night. I’d listen to ‘Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow… Right!’ and ‘Wonderfulness,’ which are two of his most famous albums. Then the next night, I’d flip them over, ’cause it was the old stackable turntable.

I look, absolutely, like I’m going to sell you insurance.

I don’t accept the status quo. I do accept Visa, MasterCard, or American Express.

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.

I believe gender is a spectrum, and I fall somewhere between Channing Tatum and Winnie the Pooh.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty.

I’m a huge news junkie. I love what the news does.

The first time I met Jon Stewart was at the press conference that Comedy Central held to announce Jon would be the new host of ‘The Daily Show,’ which back then was not called ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.’