Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's a lot of power in laughter.
You don't get smarter by not learning stuff.
Capitalism doesn't care about sentimentality.
People always want narratives to be clean and easy.
I like living in Berkeley, but I know Berkeley's not the world.
I've always been a fan of these travel shows and documentary series.
We can't throw the worst part of racism into the dustbin of history.
That's the nature of my [stand-up] act: black man with a white baby.
No comedian grows up thinking, 'I hope one day to have a show on CNN.'
As a comedian, you see all parts of the country because you play there.
Chicago is a world-class city filled with amazing people with big ideas.
As a black man, I actually had naturally sort of comedic curiosity about the Klan.
When 'Totally Biased' was canceled, I thought my career was over - but apparently it wasn't.
We really suffer from a hot-take disease, wanting to be the first one who has the hottest take.
Atheism is like the highest level of white privilege. It's like having a black belt in white privilege.
America, the self-described greatest nation on Earth, has the highest incarceration rate on the planet.
Usually, the news out of Florida makes me feel like being black in Florida can be a terminal condition.
The history of Oregon is partially the history of a state that legislated not wanting black people around.
I am a comedian: that means I laugh at things other people don't laugh at and also annoys my wife sometimes.
I've turned the annoying questions that white people ask into a career, so I understand that's where I live.
If I could email my jokes to the crowd and get the same immediate response [as during stand-up], I'd do that.
There's no religion in this country that is more misunderstood, mis-categorized, and misidentified than Islam.
To be off the grid is to be disconnected from most of America's infrastructure without having to cross any border.
In the deep corner of my heart, I'm a Chicagoan, but it's been covered over by 20 years of living in the Bay Area.
I'm a dad, and that's really important to me, and I realize now that I'm a dad that it's a major part of my identity.
The downside to defining everything Chinese as different than American is that all things Chinese then become exotic.
The big thing I learned from Chris Rock was not to be a victim of show business. Don't let show business push you around.
We should always be having a conversation about if we could make this country more inclusive and what we can do to do that.
There were definitely a few ways I could have gone after 'Totally Biased' ended. One of those was getting a job at Starbucks.
Most people have the ability to turn their empathy engine back on, but there's such a seductive burn to not being empathetic.
The alt-right is the Tea Party's younger, cooler, meaner brother. Like if the movie 'Back to The Future' was just about Biff.
Even if the KKK isn't the outsized presence it once was in this country, many of its principles and ideas are alive and well.
At worst, spring break in Daytona Beach feels feral - like everybody is trying to re-create scenes from the movie 'The Hangover.'
You pretty much have to be bad at it [stand-up] for several years to get good at it, so there's no avoiding embarrassing yourself.
The day-to-day discomforts of prison life, combined with the big-picture realities of mass incarceration, do not add up to a party.
That's how to make a stand-up comedian: You take a person who is uncomfortable and try to squirrel their way out of it through humor.
As much as some people like to put down 'political correctness,' if it wasn't for political correctness, I wouldn't be free right now.
The Olympics are great, but they only truly mean something when the moments that come out of them are bigger than the individual sports.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger was pronouncing it 'Cal-LEE-fornia,' he was right - he just didn't realize he was accidentally speaking Spanish.
I think a lot of people get into stand-up to be the center of attention, which is perfectly legitimate. But I think I got in there to be heard.
It doesn't do any good to just be on the side of black people. The funnier comedic position is to be on the side of oppressed people in general.
The country should be more inclusive, not less inclusive, and over an infinite timeline, it becomes more inclusive. It doesn't always happen at once.
Most prisons in this country are in the middle of nowhere, which makes it much easier for us all to throw those people away. Out of sight, out of mind.
I only halfway paid attention in high school Spanish class, and it may be too late now to catch up, no matter how many levels of Rosetta Stone I order.
Over the years, I'd hear Jon Stewart disavow being a journalist and say, 'No, I'm a comedian.' I'd be like, 'Stop pretending. You know you're a journalist.'
You might not agree with something, but it doesn't mean you don't need to listen to it. White people have to accept that they don't always know about racism.
Comedy is like expensive cheese. Well, it's like cheese, in general. Everybody likes what they like, and everything they don't like, they think is the worst.
Puerto Rico is complicated. The people are complicated. The history is complicated. The story of the United States' relationship to Puerto Rico is complicated.
What has happened is we've allowed the people who run policies in this country to sort of make us pick Left and the Right as if those are the only two choices.
I grew up in a household where we talked about race all the time, and that's sort of in me. So if I become the Anthony Bourdain of race and culture, then great!