Top 100 John Oliver Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “It’s pretty physically unsettling, living life on a visa.”

— John Oliver

52. “Drumpf is like a Magic 8-Ball. Every time you shake him, he gives you a different answer.”

— John Oliver

53. “I find it hard in my general life to think further than the week ahead.”

— John Oliver

54. “People in Britain see Richard Quest as a kind of an offensive cartoon character.”

— John Oliver

55. “I feel more at home knowing I’m not really at home. It takes all the pressure off you trying to fit in!”

— John Oliver

56. “I have a green card now, but they can take that away, yeah, they can take that away at any moment. So please don’t; please let me keep it.”

— John Oliver

57. “People are always going to say stupid things, and you’re always going to be able to make jokes about that, but it should be the last thing you add in, because it’s the easiest thing.”

— John Oliver

58. “I get nostalgic for British negativity. There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers. When you go back to Britain, everybody is just running everything down. It’s like whatever the opposite of a hug is.”

— John Oliver

59. “I guess the tone of jokes is often, at best, irreverent, but it always comes from a place of deep love.”

— John Oliver

60. “It’s exciting to have a role in anything that’s Claymation, just because you’re always intrigued by what a clay wizard version of yourself would be.”

— John Oliver

61. “Wow. Losing 95 percent of your audience in just five years. That basically makes Obama the NBC of presidents.”

— John Oliver

62. “There are two kinds of hecklers: the destructive and constructive hecklers.”

— John Oliver

63. “People are friendlier in New York than London.”

— John Oliver

64. “I feel non-stop Brit shame!”

— John Oliver

65. “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.”

— John Oliver

66. “You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn’t be when it is literally your job.”

— John Oliver

67. “I’m British. I don’t really have access to my emotions on a daily basis.”

— John Oliver

68. “It really helps a comedian to be an outsider.”

— John Oliver

69. “You’re sonically racist, Americans. You think we all sound the same, whereas I have definitely a mongrel accent.”

— John Oliver

70. “A Southern accent is not a club in my bag.”

— John Oliver

71. “Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.”

— John Oliver

72. “My family are from Liverpool, so I have some twang there – I have a Midlands accent, and I was raised about an hour north of London, so my voice is a mess. Although, to American ears, it sounds like the crisp language of a queen’s butler.”

— John Oliver

73. “Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had.”

— John Oliver

74. “I know I’d be an absolutely horrendous politician.”

— John Oliver

75. “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.”

— John Oliver

76. “Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.”

— John Oliver

77. “Sarah Palin has been hired back by Fox News, and she only left five months ago. She has now effectively quit quitting. She can’t even commit to being uncommitted.”

— John Oliver

78. “You don’t really know when stand-up material is TV ready; it’s just at what point you’re willing to let it go and not work on it anymore. I’m not sure there is a point at which you think: ‘And that is finished.’”

— John Oliver

79. “I wanted to be a soccer player. I knew that couldn’t happen.”

— John Oliver

80. “The disconnect between America and its military is shocking.”

— John Oliver

81. “I’ve always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy.”

— John Oliver

82. “I was definitely prepared for it to be slower, and it has not worked out that way in any shape or form. I’m grateful as a comedian, and slightly demoralized, occasionally, as a human being – those two things are always very different.”

— John Oliver

83. “The moment I accept that there’s an artistic, redeeming quality in puns, I have a horrible feeling I’ll get hooked.”

— John Oliver

84. “Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.”

— John Oliver

85. “Having a human conversation is not something I’ve had any training in either as a comedian or as, you know, a human being.”

— John Oliver

86. “I have exactly as much rhythm as you think I have.”

— John Oliver

87. “I knew I was going to go into the field and make fun of people to their faces. I knew what I was getting into.”

— John Oliver

88. “There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers.”

— John Oliver

89. “I’m always interested in audience interaction. Not so much aggressive audience interaction – I’m genuinely interested in how people see things.”

— John Oliver

90. “The British press are a group of unremitting scumbags. And sometimes they use that scumbaggery to good ends, and often not.”

— John Oliver

91. “There’s never any time I think I’m a real journalist, because I don’t have any of the qualifications or the intentions for that.”

— John Oliver

92. “Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I’ve ever been in. They’ve really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper.”

— John Oliver

93. “You just try to be true to your idea of what is funny and what is also interesting.”

— John Oliver

94. “I think Americans still can’t help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That’s why so many infomercials have British people.”

— John Oliver

95. “When you’re doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.”

— John Oliver

96. “I would hate to meet myself at 15.”

— John Oliver

97. “Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you.”

— John Oliver

98. “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.”

— John Oliver

99. “I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it.”

— John Oliver

100. “If you vote for Democrats, you might as well give Al Quaeda a death ray and a manual.”

— John Oliver