Jimmy Carr > Quotes

“Let's face it, the gene pool needs a little chlorine.”
― Jimmy Carr

“If only Africa had more mosquito nets then every year we could save millions of mosquitoes from dying needlessly of aids”
― Jimmy Carr

“Put Smarties tubes on cats legs, make them walk like a robot.”
― Jimmy Carr

“Creationists, the right-wing Christians, creationists believe every word Genesis says. I don't even think Phil Collins is a good drummer.”
― Jimmy Carr

“Here’s my advice for dealing with family trauma: accept the apology you’re never going to get and move on. There, I just saved you £25,000 in therapy. You’re welcome.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter: A Life Changing Book

“Common sense and a sense of humour, are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour, is just common sense, dancing.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“You want the key to happiness? I’ll give it to you. Happiness is expectations exceeded. Happiness is the gap between what we thought might happen and what actually happened.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“Here’s the truth of it: no one wants you to follow your dream. Best-case scenario, they’ll want you to follow their dream for you.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“To say that ‘life’s a joke’ is not so much to belittle life as to correctly identify the elusive nature of the joke. Jokes have the measure of us. They change in the telling, defy capture, slip through our fingers like water. And they outlast us all. They are trifles, fragments, nothings that turn out to be all that’s left: the aptest metaphor for our pathetic species’ struggle to survive.”
― Jimmy Carr

“Be nice because it’s the right thing to do, it’s the best way to act in the world and it is what good human beings do. Being difficult and diva-ish or petulant just makes you hard to deal with, it doesn’t make you more authentic or creative or real.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“I don't have an English accent because this is what English sounds like when spoken properly.”
― Jimmy Carr

“Fear is nothing to be afraid of. Fear is a performance-enhancing drug.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“If you can be with a loved one when they die, you should. Her hands getting cold as the circulation shuts down, her breathing getting heavy, the death rattle. Bearing witness to a death is an incredibly intimate thing. You should be there, not because it’s easy – it isn’t – but because one day you’ll want someone to hold your hand. One day your mum put you down and never picked you up again.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter: A Life Changing Book

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world. — Ludwig Wittgenstein”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“Change is always right around the corner. It’s probably best to start thinking of it as a good thing because however comfortable and content you are right now, this too shall pass. However despairing and anxious you are right now, this too shall pass.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“When you look back on your life you won’t remember sitting on the sofa watching TV, you’ll remember the uncomfortable times. You’ll remember the times you struggled, the sweat, the tears, you’ll remember when you overcame adversity. Those are the great moments of your life.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“People say, “Now you’ve given up booze at least you can remember what you did last night.” I say, “Yeah, nothing.” —Frank Skinner”
― Jimmy Carr, Only Joking: What's So Funny About Making People Laugh?

“Failure is not falling down. Failure is falling down and not getting up again to continue life’s race. – Richard Nixon”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“But here’s the thing about being human: if we put off doing anything risky for long enough, fear will attach itself. Then what happens is that fear will attract even more fear until the fear becomes so big it starts to obscure the thing you mean to do. Fuck that shit. Feel the fear and fuck it anyway.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter: A Life Changing Book

“Actually, seriousness is not incompatible with joking. It’s a common mistake to confuse ‘serious’ with ‘solemn’, and to assume that seriousness of purpose can only be conveyed by solemnity of tone.”
― Jimmy Carr, The Naked Jape: Uncovering The Hidden World Of Jokes

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. – Philip Larkin”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“Do the duty nearest to thee, and thy second duty will already become clearer. – Thomas Carlyle”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“In the normal run of things, we ignore the joke's dark underbelly. We laugh them off without much thought, but the jokes we tell and the jokes we respond to reveal a great deal about us.
They can function at once to conceal and to expose our deepest beliefs and bigotries.”
― Jimmy Carr, The Naked Jape: Uncovering The Hidden World Of Jokes

“Laughter is a release of tension on discovering that a perceived threat is not, in fact, a threat at all.”
― Jimmy Carr, The Naked Jape: Uncovering The Hidden World Of Jokes

“Have you ever been to the Parthenon in Athens? If you’ve seen a photo, it’s nice, right? The photo is nice, but the real thing is fucking amazing. That’s like you. The best photo of you is nothing like being in the room with you.”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter: A Life Changing Book

“Jesse Joyce is an excellent stand up comedian and comedy writer. But it’s my contention that his borderline obsession with researching weird and wonderful events from history has robbed America of a great serial killer.”
― Jimmy Carr

“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“Being offended on behalf of someone is bullshit. It’s virtue signalling and it’s condescending (condescending means patronising, like when you talk down to someone - you understand, right?).”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter: A Life Changing Book

“Or even, like the Union commander General John Sedgwick, during the American Civil War, 'They couldn't hit an elephant from this dist...”
― Jimmy Carr, The Naked Jape: Uncovering The Hidden World Of Jokes