Top 350 Stephen Colbert Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “History moves fast. It’s hard to believe that gay Americans achieved full constitutional personhood just five years after corporations did!”

— Stephen Colbert

252. “If it’s called the USA Today, why is all the news from yesterday?”

— Stephen Colbert

253. “Everybody loves dogs. They’re the pizza of the animal kingdom.”

— Stephen Colbert

254. “Contraception leads to more babies being born out of wedlock, like fire extinguishers lead to more fires.”

— Stephen Colbert

255. “Make no mistake – they’re coming for our guns. And we freedom-loving gun lovers are totally defenseless! Other than, you know, the guns.”

— Stephen Colbert

256. “You have to have a passionate opinion; otherwise you sound false. You end up telling the audience jokes they’ve already heard.”

— Stephen Colbert

257. “You said in your book that at the end of the day, every politician is human. What about during the day?”

— Stephen Colbert

258. “If anybody needs anything else at their tables, just speak slowly and clearly into your table numbers. Someone from the NSA will be right over with a cocktail.”

— Stephen Colbert

259. “Any religion whose messiah’s name isn’t recognized by Microsoft Word can’t be that much of a threat.”

— Stephen Colbert

260. “There’s a buzz to failing and not dying.”

— Stephen Colbert

261. “Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes’.”

— Stephen Colbert

262. “News for the godless: religion is inescapable. there has never been a human society without some form of worship. And don’t point to communist societies like the Soviet Union – they worshipped blue jeans.”

— Stephen Colbert

263. “You don’t want to just do a joke because it works – we can make a lot of jokes work – you want to do a joke because it will hopefully build into an argument.”

— Stephen Colbert

264. “Thirty seconds is the exact amount of time Americans can tolerate something they don’t understand.”

— Stephen Colbert

265. “Charles Darwin got totally hammered, woke up next to a monkey and decided he had to come up with a theory to make it all okay.”

— Stephen Colbert

266. “Liberals want to burn the flag, but progressives just want to microwave it?”

— Stephen Colbert

267. “Of course! Jeb Bush! America is hungry for another leader from that talented family!”

— Stephen Colbert

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

— Stephen Colbert

269. “If I’m doing a talk show or an interview, or pretty much anything where I can’t control the context, I’m loath to do the character.”

— Stephen Colbert

270. “It’s no surprise I am addicted to all the Republican presidential candidates. They are like crack – in that they will devastate black communities.”

— Stephen Colbert

271. “Some people perceive me as an assassin or at least someone who can slip under your guard with a knife. But if you watch what I do, that’s almost never the case. I’m just trying to keep the balloon in the air. It rarely turns into anything combative.”

— Stephen Colbert

272. “If I had one wish, it would be for self-drying pants. Wait – no! Unlimited wishes! How do I return these stupid pants?!”

— Stephen Colbert

273. “I gotta tell you, I do not envy whoever they try to put in David Letterman’s chair. Folks those are some huge shoes to fill, and some really big pants.”

— Stephen Colbert

274. “I deliver my Truth hot and hard.”

— Stephen Colbert

275. “Can you really put a price on annoying two religions at once?”

— Stephen Colbert

276. “While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is good, race cleansing is bad.”

— Stephen Colbert

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

— Stephen Colbert

278. “Last night was Super Tuesday – a 10-state GOP Primary orgy. A big, sweaty pile of lever-yankin Republican voters. And like most orgies, it involves a bunch of middle aged guys who are not appealing to women.”

— Stephen Colbert

279. “You don’t need the right facts if you have the right inflection.”

— Stephen Colbert

280. “I can really find something interesting about almost anyone I talk to.”

— Stephen Colbert

281. “Mitt Romney’s email was hacked! So if you start getting messages that sound like they’re from a bot, he’s fixed the problem.”

— Stephen Colbert

282. “To all the worryworts out there who said super PACs were going to lead to a cabal of billionaires secretly buying democracy: wrong! They are publicly buying democracy.”

— Stephen Colbert

283. “I’ll make fun of anybody. We’re all about falling down and going boom on camera.”

— Stephen Colbert

284. “Obamacare needs the premiums of healthier people to cover the costs of sicker people. It’s a devious con that can only be described as insurance.”

— Stephen Colbert

285. “Will Herman Cain become the first black President that I acknowledge? I call him a dark horse because he’s an unlikely candidate who surged forward, and not because he’s a horse.”

— Stephen Colbert

286. “In America, we know to ignore artists if they’re serious in any way.”

— Stephen Colbert

287. “Throughout human history, countries rise and fall. But not America-we continue to rise and rise, like dough, until Jesus bakes us in the fiery Afterscape of the Rapture.”

— Stephen Colbert

288. “This is America. We must defend the principles symbolized by Lady Liberty – unless she’s on the pill, in which case, she is a giant green tramp.”

— Stephen Colbert

289. “So if animals aren’t our friends, then what are they? The answer can be summed up between two buns.”

— Stephen Colbert

290. “I don’t like the new president who hunts muslim extremists, I like the old president who is a muslim extremist.”

— Stephen Colbert

291. “It’s the way our founding fathers would have wanted it, if they had founded corporations instead of just a country.”

— Stephen Colbert

292. “But children are our future!′ Yes, but does that not also mean that we are their past? I don’t understand why we’re helping them. You don’t see union factory workers throwing a benefit for robots.”

— Stephen Colbert

293. “NASA scientists have discovered a new form of life, unfortunately, it won’t date them either.”

— Stephen Colbert

294. “As far as I can tell, a young adult novel is a regular novel that people actually read.”

— Stephen Colbert

295. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Sorry, Darwin-huggers, but it’s not “In the beginning, a monkey evolutioned gay marriage.”

— Stephen Colbert

296. “For me, improvisation is about working with a partner. That is much easier to do in the interview, because you have a sounding board.”

— Stephen Colbert

297. “Take away the Big Bang and what has God done? Burned a bush and got a girl pregnant. Great, he’s a high school junior.”

— Stephen Colbert

298. “What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press.”

— Stephen Colbert

299. “Once I’m performing the show, I think that hour show has a certain intimacy with our audience. And that intimacy is through the lens and the live audience is a witness to that, whereas the audience at home is actually the object of my efforts.”

— Stephen Colbert

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

— Stephen Colbert