Stand Up Comedy Quotes

“This is the material, by the way, that has kept me virtually anonymous in America for the past 15 years. Gee, I wonder why we're hated the world over? Look at these fat Americans in the front row - 'Why doesn't he just hit fruit with a hammer?' Folks, I could have done that, walked around being a millionaire and franchising myself but no, I had to have this weird thing about trying to illuminate the collective unconscious and help humanity. Fucking moron.”
― Bill Hicks

“On the theft of his material by Denis Leary: "I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.”
― Bill Hicks

“I don't know if you've noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror.”
― Lewis Black

“I want my rockstars dead.”
― Bill Hicks

“It seems to me that they only seem to mention things in the Bible that are within a 5 mile radius of the guy writing it.”
― Jim Jefferies

“Asking someone else to drive your sports car is like asking someone else to kiss your girlfriend.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Universal Pictures presents the Georgie Jessel Story. Ted Bessell is Georgie Jessel. Ted Bessell leads an all-star cast of Ted Bessell, Joey Bishop, Jacqueline Bisset, Whit Bissell and Joe Besser. Besser, Bissell, Bissett, Bishop and Bessell. The New York Times says, 'Bessell is Jessel". The Jewish Press says, 'We like Bessell, but only a bissel.”
― Gilbert Gottfried

“Sahl was never a great comic. His nervous, jabbing, keep-them-off-balance delivery was the strategy of a man who was not comfortable in front of an audience. His creative method -- a rapid scanning of the day's output of newspapers, magazines, and radio broadcasts -- was a recipe for superficiality or, at best, the kind of quick, shallow laugh triggered by a topical allusion. Sahl was always devoid of the two basic ingredients of great humor: imagination and soul. He could make fun of the latest Hollywood movies. He could stab at the pieties of his own class. He could take an abrupt insight into politics or wold events and phrase it neatly into a gag. What he could never do was suggest a world of living, breathing people behaving in ridiculous yet recognizably human patterns.”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“I found a gray hair one of my testicles the today. No, it wasn't mine, but it's frightening.”
― Dave Attell

“Some so-called comedians are, not funny, but a joke.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Laughing is a gazillion times more likely than praying to leave you grateful to be alive.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Comedians are the most ruthless critics in the world.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“I found a gray hair on one of my testicles today. No, it wasn't mine, but it's frightening.”
― Dave Attell

“There's a lot of guys up there who like wearing a suit or try doing jokes that they think will play to a certain crowd, or maybe get them corporate work. I've always written jokes that I would want to hear. So, I'm trying to entertain myself more than anything.”
― Jim Jefferies

“After 30 years of coaching and teaching stand-up comedy to thousands, both in my workshops (longest continuous in LA) and private coachings; I finally wrote the book! It covers 1-Discovering your Comedic Character; 2- an 80-page workbook using the best joke formulas from over 25 years in my workshops: 3- How to put it all together, deal with audiences, clubs, and the biz.”
― Steve North, How to Kill in Comedy

“Stand-up comedy is all about nerve--a battle between aggressor and victims with wit as the weapon and laughter as the prize. Different from prizefights that pit people against one another in the presence of paying spectators, comedy pits the fighter against the paying customers, with silence as the killer, and the detonation of laughter as the victory.”
― Ruth R. Wisse, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor

“If you cannot make others think deeply, at least make them laugh hard. Do both, if you are that gifted.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The pleasure of laughing is more than doubled by the ability of making others laugh.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“He's so fucking crooked he sleeps on a spiral staircase!”
― Dylan Moran, Dylan Moran Live - What It Is