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John Oliver
101 quotes
“It's very dangerous, a British person saying "I felt ownership of this country". Historically, does not go well. It's amazing! I just went to India and I felt like I belonged.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: John Oliver - Finding a Place for Satire & Immigration as a Comedian | The Daily Show (21 November 2023) (ff. 0:08:16)
“I would say, what is more quintessentially America than coming to a country you don't belong in and deciding you're going to stay?”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: John Oliver - Finding a Place for Satire & Immigration as a Comedian | The Daily Show (21 November 2023) (ff. 0:12:52)
“Thanks very much for taking this magical moment and reminding me that joy is ephemeral, pain is forever.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: See John Oliver's Hilarious Reaction to Donald Trump's Iowa Caucus Victory (Exclusive) (15 January 2024)
“Many people would argue that the most dangerous inhabitant of the earth is currently the self styled 43rd president of the United States. Not so much in deed anymore as in word. Because to hear that man speak is to wish upon yourself physical harm.”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You might look at the Oreo Pizza and think, "That is a reprehensible foodstuff". I put it to you that that is the single most patriotic item I have ever seen in my life! Hoist that up a flagpole! ... Because that is the biggest imaginable "fuck you" you could possibly issue to terrorists. By hoisting the Oreo Pizza up a flagpole, what you're essentially saying is, "There is nothing you can do to us, we are not already doing to ourselves".”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jon called me and asked, "Would you like to host the show?" My first reaction was, "Yeah, sure. Whatever you want. No problem." It was only on hanging up that my knees started to buckle. I was like, "Holy shit! What did I just agree to? I'm about to destroy the most beloved show on American television.”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’re not supposed to see your country’s most famous author [J.K. Rowling] in the audience watching you. You’re supposed to look down at that point and realize that you’re naked and then wake up.”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression.”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Welcome to Last Week Tonight! I am John Oliver and welcome, welcome... welcome to whatever this is.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "India, Pomegranates & Lisa Loeb (ff. 0:00:30) (27 April 2014)
“Lest we forget, when Europe goes far right, they go far, right through Belgium.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Net Neutrality, Spelling Bees & EU Elections" (ff. 0:01:11) (1 June 2014)
“The cable companies have figured out the great truth of America: If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring. Apple could put the entire text of "Mein Kampf" inside the iTunes user agreement, and you'd just go, "Uh, agree, agree, agr-- what? Agree, agree.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Net Neutrality, Spelling Bees & EU Elections" (ff. 0:17:15) (1 June 2014)
“When your rainy day fund is so big you've got to check it for swimming cartoon ducks, you might not be a not-profit anymore.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "FIFA, Syria & Tiananmen Square (ff. 0:16:18) (8 June 2014)
“Congratulations, Dave, you've just constructed a straw man so large you could burn it in the desert and hold an annoying festival around it.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- Immigration, Stephen Hawking & Football (ff. 0:16:15) (15 June 2014)
“John Oliver: You've stated that you believe there could be an infinite number of parallel universes. Does that mean that there is a universe out there where I am smarter than you? Stephen Hawking: Yes. And also a universe where you're funny.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Stephen Hawking Extended Interview" (ff. 0:05:37) (15 June 2014)
“… we were in a situation where, in the event of us launching a nuclear strike, the President's command would theoretically have gone through a man gambling with fake poker chips, who would've then tried to call a drunk guy wrestling with a Russian George Harrison, who would've then needed to send someone with a bag full of burritos to wake up an officer and tell him to go grab an LP-sized floppy disk and begin the solemn process of ending the world as we know it.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Summary of 2013–2014 reports on U.S. nuclear readiness and scandals surrounding senior commanders.
“Please, make sure your college years are the best ones of your life because, thanks to the debt that we are saddling you with, they almost certainly will be.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Student Debt, Gecko Update & ISIS" (ff. 0:23:40), (8 March 2014)
“Drug companies are a bit like high school boyfriends; they're much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they're in there.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Marketing to Doctors" (ff. 0:02:20) (8 Feb 2015)
“As far as I can see, this is a system that has enriched multiple companies and that pays and fires teachers with a cattle birthing formula, confuses children with talking pineapples, and has the same kind of rules regarding transparency as Brad Pitt had for Fight Club.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Standardized Testing" (ff. 0:16:53) (3 May 2015)
“For the record if someone did that to me I'd hitch a ride to the International Space Station straight away; of course who am I kidding, they would never let me in, I've got spiders for hands! The internet is mean!”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Online Harassment" (ff. 0:04:02) (21 June 2015)
“In science, you don't just get to cherry-pick the parts that justify what you were going to do anyway! That's religion! You're thinking of religion.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Scientific Studies" (ff. 0:14:44), (8 May 2016)
“It's like catching an ice cream cone out of the air because a child was hit by a car.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Brexit Update" (ff. 0:00:48), (27 June 2016)
“You can't just hear a conspiracy theory, fan the flames, and then walk away! "Is Katy Perry Jonbenet Ramsey?" "Well, identity theft is a real and persistent issue in this day and age, and we really need to look into that!”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Third Parties" (ff. 0:08:48), (17 October 2016)
“He is truly one of the most revolting humans (minions) I have ever seen. In a way, there is no more fitting spokesman for the Trump administration than an entitled, elitist arsehole who refuses to take responsibility for the messes he makes, and who can somehow pick a fight with the Statue of Liberty.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Stephen Miller" (ff. 0:02:45), (4 August 2017)
“Oh, why do I love Salisbury? It's simple. The population is 40,302. And their member of parliament is John Glen, a Conservative whose eight-year tenure has been widely viewed as a failure. (open brackets: "citation needed", closed brackets.)”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Saudi Arabia" (ff. 0:02:43) (15 October 2018)
“Please, buy [Last Week Tonight Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo] for your children, buy it for any child you know, or just buy it because you know it would annoy Mike Pence. You'd be doing a nice thing in a really dickish way, and isn't that the dream at the end of the day?”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Mike Pence" (ff. 0:19:24) (19 March 2018)
“Britain is basically Pompeii if Pompeii had voted for the volcano.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Brexit III" (ff. 0:14:30) (17 February 2019)
“Calling slave labor "chores" is a euphemism on par with calling Hitler a "best-selling author with a side hustle" or JFK's assassination a "bad hair day" or this a comedy show.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "U.S. History" (ff. 0:09:36) (2 August 2020)
“And look, do I think it’s bad if Disney pays more taxes? No, I don’t. That would be a good thing. I don’t love that it might happen not through meaningful tax reform but on the whim of one right-wing dipshit who’s scared of gay people and doesn’t understand the First Amendment. But hey: Ends, means, what are you gonna do?”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oliver thinks desantis is a right-wing dipshit who's scared of gay people John Oliver, Last Week Tonight (May 2022)
“Hope and joy are crucial here; they are the fuel that powers the ongoing fight for equality. And while there is a lot of fear and uncertainty right now, it is worth remembering that progress -- while not always linear -- is always possible.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Transgender Rights II" (ff. 0:25:46) (17 October 2022)
“There is a natural human impulse to protect children, to grab a toddler you don't know if you see them running into traffic, and if that impulse is broken or disincentivized by a government, there is absolutely a humanitarian crisis, no matter what any asshole has to say about it.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Israel-Hamas War" (ff. 0:26:54) (12 November 2023)
“It has to be possible to feel the pain in one community without denying it in another. It has to be! That is perhaps the most necessary precondition for peace because real peace here will clearly be difficult! It's gonna be struggled toward as part of a larger pursuit of justice which will, in turn, require an honest and uncomfortable reckoning with all the decisions that brought us to this point.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Israel-Hamas War" (ff. 0:29:30) (12 November 2023)
“You can see how baiting customers with one price and then switching it for another might be considered a bait-and-switch! There's actually a great Econ book on the subject entitled "Words Mean What Words Mean"!”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Elon Musk" (ff. 0:09:58) (17 December 2023)
“Wait, he "loves drama"?! I'm sorry, I'm really not that comfortable with one of the most powerful people on Earth being summed up the same way you describe Andy Cohen on New Year's Eve!”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Elon Musk" (ff. 0:28:35) (17 December 2023)
“From the beginning, America -- like most countries -- was built on polite fictions by men who could somehow hold in their heads the idea that all men were created equal at the exact same time that they were drawing up the three-fifths compromise.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Supreme Court Ethics" (ff. 0:25:05) (18 February 2024)
“We have spoken to experts who have all told us that, best they can tell, this is somehow legal. Which seems crazy to me, 'cause it really feels like it shouldn't be.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Supreme Court Ethics" (ff. 0:27:14) (18 February 2024)
“Whenever they don't want to talk about something, it's probably worth you knowing about it.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight (25 February 2024)
“If your friend told you to download an app and you saw it in the App Store with good reviews, you might assume that everything on it was legitimate even before you saw MetaTrader's logo, which looks like three men in suits jerking each other off under a table -- an appropriate metaphor for cryptocurrency if I have ever seen one.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Pig Butchering Scams" (ff. 0:11:35) (25 February 2024)
“If you're funny enough, you can make people forget a lot of things, whether it's common-sense internet safeguards, lessons from previous relationships, or that they've been accidentally learning about financial fraud and human trafficking for the last twenty minutes. We're having fun, aren't we?”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Pig Butchering Scams" (ff. 0:19:00) (25 February 2024)
“One project leader in the 80s and early 90s is remembered for saying "No secrets" and "The only thing that will make me rip off your head and shit down your neck is withholding information." And I'm sorry, but that should be the mug.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Boeing" (ff. 0:06:07) (3 March 2024)
“I'm curious, is it a rule that, to be in Congress, you have to be one of the weirdest motherfuckers to ever live?”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight, in response to Nancy Pelosi's "Tic, tac, toe, a winner" comment on the House floor (17 March 2024)
“I'm not saying college is the right choice for everyone -- but it should be a choice.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Student Loans" (ff. 0:29:22) (17 March 2024)
“I know I've spend a lot of time over the last ten years reassuring everyone that this show does comedy and not journalism, but I think we can all agree that the most important thing we do here is stir shit up.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Executions" (ff. 0:11:55) (7 April 2024)
“The fact is, no matter how executions are performed, they'll never be humane. No matter how many times you call them "textbook" or claim it's "much better than anything they did to the victims", or show people viral videos of dizzy tweens on helium, it's never gonna be okay, and we are kidding ourselves if we think taking someone's life actually lowers the number of killers in the world; it literally, definitionally, creates more.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Executions" (ff. 0:26:29) (7 April 2024)
“While you can believe aliens exist or not, when it comes to UFOs, belief doesn't really come into it; whatever they are, people are seeing them. That poster in Mulder's office shouldn't have said "I Want To Believe", it should've said "Believe, Smelieve, What The Fuck Is That Thing?”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "UFOs" (ff. 0:04:42) (21 April 2024)
“There's something out there that's better than our airplane." It is chilling to hear that from a Navy pilot and not the usual place: the Executive Boardroom at Boeing.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "UFOs" (ff. 0:21:00) (21 April 2024)
“When New Jersey sends us mayors, they're clearly not sending their best.”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everyone who's ever been to a protest has, at some point, seen a sign and thought to themselves "Shit, not sure about that one. I'm here for abortion rights; do we really need to bring 9/11 into this"?”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Student protests against injustice generally age pretty well, and the efforts to criticize or crack down on them tend not to.”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know God! The freak known for building a nude garden He could watch all day. The guy who commissioned the construction of an all-animal fuck boat, and who sat back and watched while His own son got nailed. Oh, I'm sorry! Am I misunderstanding the Bible by taking things out of context? Forgive me, I haven't read it. I looked at the summary; it told me all I needed to know.”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know it is not shocking that an episode of this show would advocate to support your local libraries; it's pretty much implicit in our whole vibe. My suit, glasses, and desk all practically scream "support your local libraries" to which the rest of my body would say out of respect, "Shh!”
John Oliver (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source