Top 1200 Comedian Quotes & Sayings

I have too many influences to name. I like a wide variety of stuff, which I think has been helpful. I liked every comedian I saw on TV growing up in the '80s. Every comedian.

My audience has accepted me for a long time as, you know, not a fat comedian but a comedian who happens to be fat. That's a huge difference.

Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'

I was with a famous comedian when a young fan walked up and asked for an autograph. The comedian blew him off. I'll never forget the look on the young boy's face. He was devastated.

I think there is a weird loneliness that comes with being a comedian. There is something definitely inside the personality of a person who wants to be a comedian, and (he or she) is looking to connect (to the audience) at all times.

Black comics, they only watch Black comedians. You're a comedian; you're not just a Black comedian. You're a comedian. I try to get that through to everybody.

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

I would have liked to be a comedian in the '20s, or maybe even a comedian on the Mayflower and have a statue somewhere.

I am a comedian. You may or may not find me funny, but the fact remains, that I am a comedian.

I think it's a tough transition. It's easy to go from comedian to rapper, but to go from rapper to comedian is tougher.

Sometimes people say I'm a political comedian, which, actually I'm not. I'm a comedian who sometimes discusses politics, culture - again, the word 'politics' to me is just life.

You know, a comedian's comedian is just that - it's a guy who's original and funny and can make comics laugh.

If you get too well-known, you can never be a comedian's comedian, it just won't sit well. But I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that label.

One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that I'm a comedian, which I'm not. A comedian is someone who can stand up in front of an audience and make you laugh. I've never done stand-up and I never will. I'm a comic actor. My comedy comes through my characters.

Whatever happens in life can happen on the stage, but as a comedian you should always be clear what your target is. It's fine to be gratuitously tasteless if that's what you are intending to do. It's that old line: I don't defend what a comedian might say but I defend to the death his right to say it.

My roots were in acting. That's all I wanted to be. Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'

I'm more of an older school comedian so Tommy Davidson still makes me laugh a lot no matter how many times I've heard his jokes or not. He's just an animated comedian that I don't mind seeing over and over again.

I'm a rap comedian the same way Bill Cosby is a jazz comedian, Cosby's laid back. I'm like, bang, bang bang, right into it.

Firstly, I am not a comedian. I have a sense of doing comedy but I am a character artist. If the character in the film is a comedy than I can portray it. But, I am not a comedian.

When you do stuff as a comedian, Hollywood sees you as a comedian and so most of the calls I get are for a funny movie or something like that.

Freedom of speech does not mean that you have to agree with everything that a comedian says, but that comedian should have the freedom to be able to try to make that funny. It's the attempt that I'm trying to defend so hard, no necessarily the execution.

For every stand-up comedian, Just for Laughs is our Super Bowl. Every comic in the world goes to Just for Laughs in Montreal. And they presented me with the Stand-Up Comedian of the Year award for 2018. This is my Oscar; this is my Emmy. That's my baby now.

A comedian's a comedian. They're a very kind of cynical bunch. I guess that's why I like them.

Harold Lloyd was not a comedian. But he was the finest actor to play a comedian that I ever saw.

For a comedian, there is nothing better than watching another great comedian.

I am a comedian but it's usually not a compliment to be called a prop comedian but I guess I sometimes use props. And I always confuse humorist with comedian. That's strange.

I have a funny sense of humor. If I was a comedian and I was up on stage, people would think that's funny, because I'm a funny comedian. I'm an entertainer.

If I say 'political comedian,' then people think you're talking about you, the Senate and Congress, and what's going on in Washington D.C. If I say 'comedian,' people automatically assume that you're a comedian who talks about how his wife won't listen to him and that dummy down at the mechanic who wouldn't fix his car.

If you go down as a comedian's comedian, that's basically meaning other comedians are hopefully feeling that you're doing okay.

A person who is a comedian does comedy in real life, too. But then there are others, too, who are very good in real life, but can't perform in front of the camera. They get nervous. Nevertheless, an inborn comedian does comedy whether he is in films or not.

Half the time, you go on any one of these news sites, whether it be a Yahoo or a Google, and one of the top headlines is always, "Did a comedian go too far?" or "Comedian offends." It's like, "Really? Comedian?" A person that's supposed to make funny and make silly and historically was the only person who was allowed to make fun of the king? We're the ones that you're taking seriously?

I have never bought into this view that some people have that the job of the comedian is to espouse opinions and change the world - I think the job of a comedian is to be funny.

When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. All right, you're a stand-up comedian, can you write us a script? That's not fair. That's like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I'm a really good cook, they'd say, "OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?"

I'm an actor, I'm not a comedian, I never was a comedian.

I knew that drinking and doing stand-up was going to make me less of an effective comedian. And I just had a lot invested in wanting to be a really good comedian and so I stopped for that reason.

In high school, I was the class comedian as opposed to the class clown. The difference is the class clown is the guy who drops his pants at the football game, the class comedian is the guy who talked him into it.

I'm very much a stand-up comedian in my heart. That's really what I do. Now I'm trying to incorporate all of the different elements of my work as a performer, and use it as a stand-up comedian.

A hero has to become a comedian to do a comic role but a comedian does not have to do anything. People laugh at him anyway. Even when I attend funerals, people look at my face and laugh.

I paid attention to not being a comedian, and just concentrated on being who I was. That is what you have to do. If you say you are a comedian that has been done before. If you just be who you are then you are unique. Everyone is unique.

If I was a young man, I might have bypassed the whole comedian-actor thing and just been a filmmaker. Then I'd probably have spent my whole life going, 'I wonder if I could have been a comedian.'

Now we're here in 2009. My boys are 16 and 18, one's going to USC film school, and the other seems to be a natural comedian. So now I have to go back into show business as a senior comedian. So I hope to get Walter Brennan-type roles, Gabby Hayes kind of stuff, be the old-timer. We'll see what happens.

I don't come from a comedy background or a stand-up background, but I think that sometimes there's a misconception that an actor who works primarily in comedy is a comedian. There's nothing wrong with being a comedian, but I'm absolutely not that. I can't think of anything more terrifying than doing stand-up!

There's a weird loneliness that comes with being a comedian, especially standup. Even with improvisers, I think there are certain moments of truth where you feel really, really connected to audiences, and that's when you're on stage. I think there's definitely something inside the personality of a person who wants to be a comedian that's looking to connect at all times. That's where the adrenaline rushes in their lives come from.

The thing is, I was never really a comedian - a comedian would scoff at the notion of me as a comedian because I've never done anything, really. I've always just been some guy who's funny.

I get very confused about being called a comedian, because when you say 'I'm a comedian,' people expect you to crack a joke. Maybe I use laughter and humour to make people think. I don't know what you call that - a humourist? A satirist? A pessimistic comedian? I don't know. Satirists can be very dark.

I told them I wanted to be a comedian, and they laughed; I became a comedian, no one's laughing now

I'm such a fan of Lily's [Tomlin], for so many years. I feel like Lily was the first popular mainstream crossover comedian who also was kind of an overtly feminist comedian.

When you ask people who their favorite comedian is or favorite African-American comedian, people generally say Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, or Richard Pryor. Redd Foxx gets left out a lot.

When you see a comedian on stage, the best comedians make it feel like a conversation. But it's not. We have very little interest in what an audience has to say during a performance. Being a stand-up comedian, you're an egomaniac to some degree. Everyone wants to hear what you have to say, apparently. That's not how real relationships work.

I get called all kinds of things - an investigative comedian, a comedian activist - I've lost track of what my job title is.

It used to be if you wanted to be a comedian, you used to just do sets. You'd go up three times a night, just get better, and then some people would see you and you'd do 'The Tonight Show,' and then boom, you're a comedian.

There are three goals for any comedian: to make a living as a comedian; I've been fortunate to do that. To make a name for yourself and to be famous would be great - because it would give me that freedom.

I never really set out to be a comedian, but as a kid, I loved doing sketches and playing characters. And then a great friend kept telling me I should be a comedian, so I followed her advice and gave it a shot.

If a comedian has a strong following, and the branded segment feels different compared to what you typically do, people will know right away that it's not authentic to who you are as a comedian or performer. Brands need to keep that in mind.

Am I the Irish comedian with half a finger? No, I'm the Irish comedian with nine and a half fingers.

I see myself as a comedian rather than a female comedian. I happen to be a woman, but I am a comedian by trade.

I always wanted to be a comedian but never thought I'd be a musical comedian.

I've been seesawing between not doing too much racial stuff - because I'd rather be known as the funny comedian than the funny Chinese comedian - but at the same time embracing my voice and who I am and what makes me unique, you know, which is the racial background.

I wanted to be a comedian. I wanted to meet waitresses and felt that being a comedian was my best way to go about it and I was right.

I'm a comedian, and I decided I wanted to be a comedian when I was eight years old watching old Saturday Night Live episodes. I never decided to be a rapper because I'm not a rapper.