Thankfully, dreams can change. If we'd all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses.
Stephen Colbert
Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest 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.
If you don't give power to the words that people throw at you to hurt you, they don't hurt you anymore. And you actually have power over those people.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself.
I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin. If that ever happens, it's only because something happened during the interview that got me going, and then I had to translate my feelings to the mouth of the character.
I would say laughter is the best medicine. But it's more than that. It's an entire regime of antibiotics and steroids. Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche and then applies an antibiotic cream. You gotta keep it away from your eyes.
I'm a simple man with a simple mind. I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states.
I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time, that I used to be a professional ice-skater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am?
There's nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell.
Status is always ripe for satire, status is always good for comedy.
I loved George Carlin and Dean Martin. I was one of those kids who had every comedy album.
I can't prove it, but I can say it.
It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.
The truthiness is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news 'at' you.
Isn't an agnostic just an atheist without balls?
I don't accept the status quo. I do accept Visa, MasterCard, or American Express.
I love 'Sunday in the Park with George.' I saw that when I was just, just starting theater school, and I remember singing 'Finishing the Hat' or at least reading the lyrics to 'Finishing the Hat' and other songs from 'Sunday in the Park with George' to my mom to try to explain why I wanted to be an artist.
In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant. One motto on the show is, 'Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth.'
In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter.
I liked comedy as a kid. When I was a kid, I'd go to sleep to, like, Bill Cosby albums every night. I'd listen to 'Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow... Right!' and 'Wonderfulness,' which are two of his most famous albums. Then the next night, I'd flip them over, 'cause it was the old stackable turntable.
I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.
All I can do is today and tomorrow and have some idea of what we're doing next week. That's all I can worry about.
You can't really be passionately moderate. It's like wearing an 'Extra Medium' - it doesn't exist.
I have a mug that actually verifies that I'm the world's best dad. That's a mug. That's not me talking. You can't just buy those.
Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty.
I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.
I'm very comfortable with uncomfortable situations, and I think that can seem odd to people, that I like the thrill of discomfort.
Make no mistake: I love women. I'm married to one, I was birthed by one, and I played one in my high school production of 'Romeo and Juliet.' No one else could fit into the bodice.
I look, absolutely, like I'm going to sell you insurance.
My father always wanted to be 'Col-bear.' He lived in the same town as his father, and his father didn't like the idea of the name with the French pronunciation. So my father said to us, 'Do what you want. You're not going to offend anybody.' And he was dead long before I made my decision.
That's my parenting style - 'Go watch the TV.' I'm one of 11 children, and my mother's parenting style was, 'There's the TV. Go watch it. Mommy's got 10 other people to take care of.'
Don't be afraid to make things up. Never fear being exposed as a fraud. Experts make things up all the time. They're qualified to.
I believe gender is a spectrum, and I fall somewhere between Channing Tatum and Winnie the Pooh.
I wrote things for the school's newspaper, and - like all teenagers - I dabbled in poetry.
Use the word 'zeitgeist' as often as possible. Ideally, you want to find words that sound familiar but people don't really know their definitions: 'zeitgeist,' 'bildungsroman,' 'doppelganger' - better yet, anything Latin. But avoid 'paradigm.' It's so 1994. If you say the word 'paradigm,' everybody knows you're a poser.
Northwestern's alumni list is truly impressive. This university has graduated best-selling authors, Olympians, presidential candidates, Grammy winners, Peabody winners, Emmy winners, and that's just me!
The first time I met Jon Stewart was at the press conference that Comedy Central held to announce Jon would be the new host of 'The Daily Show,' which back then was not called 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.'
I have a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College in Illinois. All I did was give a speech, and now everybody has to call me Dr. Colbert.
I've been accused of being unambitious, but what I do takes up every minute. I'm executive producer, I'm a writer and the host.
Simply being a guest on David Letterman's show has been a highlight of my career. I never dreamed that I would follow in his footsteps, though everyone in late night follows Dave's lead. I'm thrilled and grateful that CBS chose me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go grind a gap in my front teeth.
I'm a junkie for exhaustion, and I'm a junkie for setting up my expectations too high and then trying to meet them.
In order to be a top-tier candidate, I need 7.5 million dollars, and I currently have 0.0 million dollars.
I spent my first two years at a small all-male college in Virginia called Hampden-Sydney. That was like going to college 120 years ago. The languages, a year of rhetoric, all of the great books, Western Man courses, stuff like that.
I deliver my Truth hot and hard.
My mom kind of led me toward acting. She wanted to be an actress when she was younger. That made me interested in it when I was a kid, because she and I are very close.
I like to do things that are publicly embarrassing, to feel the embarrassment touch me and sink into me and then be gone. I like getting on elevators and singing too loudly in that small space. The feeling you feel is almost like a vapor. The discomfort and the wishing that it would end that comes around you.
I heard that after you throw away a 'New York Times,' it takes over a hundred years for the lies to biodegrade.
I have a morality. I don't know if it's the best morality. And I do like thinking. If people perceive that as a moral intellectualism, that's fine. That's up to them to decide.
Shamelessness is a wonderful part of the character.
