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Jon Stewart

121 quotes

“For however sincerely we want to reckon and listen, the truth is America has always prioritized white comfort over black survival. Black people have had to fight so hard for equality that they've been irreparably set back in the pursuit of equity. And any real attempt to... uh, repa-- reparat-- repair. A ton. Of that damage. [whispering] Reparation. [normal voice] Sets off white people's "they're coming for our shit" alarm. Which we would know ourselves, had we actually been listening.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is a permanent underclass a necessity for American capitalism?”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You think regular people get to surround themselves with a meat shield of henchmen to go to prison in their place?”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is a wonderful award, to see all my friends here and all the people I've worked with through the years, it reminds me of just how many people I carried.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Black don't crack. But Jews... we age like avocados.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You're not your circumstances, you're not what happens to you, you're what you make of it.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you like to do dumb shit -- which is something I like very much to do -- I cannot recommend more, creating a small child who also likes to do dumb shit. Because you can do the dumb shit and say "That's what he wanted!”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I carry around, always, a quote by Twain, it-- It just so happens that I am never without it. And it's about ideas, and the quote is: "The radical invents the views. But when he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." And I keep that with me as a reminder that, even for Twain, they're not all fucking gems.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we do is an iterative business. It's a grind. It's work. The best amongst us just keeps at it.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's not the Woke Police that are gonna be an existential threat to comedy. It's not the Fresh Prince, it's the Crown Prince. It's not the fragility of audiences, it's the fragility of leaders.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If done for the right reasons, liberating a country from a despot, I don't see how that's immoral. Ah, done quickly, and then we all leave, yeah that's kind of... I mean, it's so much obviously more complicated than that. They're literally, if he doesn't allow inspections, we're bombing him — I'll allow inspections. If he doesn't allow them... on Tuesday — I'll allow them on Tuesday. If he doesn't serve fondue — alright, I'll serve fondue. I mean, they're gonna do anything, it's clear they cast their die, I mean, as hard as it is for Dick Cheney to get an erection, he's not gonna let this opportunity go by.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harvard University, December 13, 2002, in response to a question about the prospect of war in Iraq, should Saddam Hussein continue to dodge weapons inspections.
“Here is what I believe is the paradigm that would be effective and what I would love to see, and you're going to laugh because Fox News is my model. What Fox has done is they've got a guy, Roger Ailes, who's passionate and has created a model for a 24-hour news station that makes money based on a point of view... Using Fox's model, find someone with the passion and the huevos to just lay it on the line — not in a partisan way, not in the pursuit of political power and political gain, but in the pursuit of credibility. In the pursuit of being a judge, an arbiter, and earning the trust of the audience over time as an oversight to the shenanigans of the political world.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Charlie Rose interview, September 29, 2004, describing his ideal news network.
“Comedian Jon Stewart says political commentators are “making a mistake” focusing on former President Donald Trump’s individual contributions to eroding democracy, arguing instead that America’s institutions are vulnerable to “the idea that power is its own reward.” “I don’t know if autocracy is purely the domain of Donald Trump,” the former "Daily Show" host said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Unfortunately, the messiness of democracy is often maybe one of its greatest weak points. People generally want prosperity and security." "If a democratic system is having difficulty providing that or if it's being subverted by those who want to create chaos so that they can make a more authoritarian government, that's part of it, too,” he added. “If we have identified the pressure points where the guardrails look most vulnerable, that's where we should be focusing so much of our efforts in terms of strengthening. … The encouraging thing is watching on a grassroots level, people that are really viewing it as something that they want to protect and that they want to strengthen,” Stewart said.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jon Stewart to Jake Tapper, CNN, "State of the Union", (October 17, 2021) as quoted by Craig Howie, “Jon Stewart warns more risks to the political system than Trump”, Politico, (10/17/2021)
“Again, he is not singing new songs. … He is maybe singing them better than [the late Sen. Barry] Goldwater," Stewart said. "But I think it's a mistake to focus it all on this one individual and not to focus it more on the idea that power is its own reward, whether it be in the financial industry or in government. Power doesn’t ever cede itself.” “We learned a lot of this in recent decades, but especially maybe the last four or five years because Donald Trump was so disruptive and so willing to challenge norms, we have learned that a lot of the American system is built on the honor system," Stewart said. "That only works, of course, if you care about or even have a sense of honor.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jon Stewart to Jake Tapper, CNN, "State of the Union", (October 17, 2021) as quoted by Craig Howie, “Jon Stewart warns more risks to the political system than Trump”, Politico, (10/17/2021)
“What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us and us killing ourselves. If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our… We invaded two countries, and spent trillions of dollars and thousand of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over, like, five or six different countries, all to keep Americans safe. We got to do whatever we can, we’ll torture people. We got to do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. Nine people, shot in a church, what about that? “Hey what are you gonna do? Crazy is crazy, right?” That’s the part that I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Charleston Church Shooting, June 19, 2015
“I've learned one thing over these last nine years, and I was glib at best and probably dismissive at worst about this -- the work of making this world resemble one that you would prefer to live in is a lunch pail fucking job, day in and day out, where thousands of committed, anonymous, smart, and dedicated people bang on closed doors and pick up those that are fallen and grind away on issues 'til they get a positive result, and even then, have to stay on to make sure that result holds. So the good news is, I'm not saying you don't have worry about who wins the election. I'm saying you have to worry about every day before it, and every day after it, forever.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Daily Show, Feb 12, 2024
“The election that we just had was a repudiation of the status quo: an overly-regulated system that is no longer responsive, or delivering, for the needs of The People... government is theoretically a constitutional system of checks and balances between equally powerful branches. But what government actually is, is an overly-complicated, byzantine, bureaucratic maze of rules, loopholes to those rules, and norms; complex enough that 🄐 if you want to find a rule that keeps you from doing something, you'll find it; and 🄑 if you actually want to do something, you can find a loophole to get around said rule. And then the norms are just how often you've had to pull any of this shit.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Daily Show, Nov 18, 2024
“Let's talk about the real world for a moment. We had been discussing it earlier, and I… I wanted to bring this up to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess as good a time as any. I don’t really know to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it. Please don’t be mad. I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So, sorry. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news lately, but it just kinda got away from us. Somewhere between the gold rush of easy internet profits and an arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on us. So I apologize.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I sit here today, I can't help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 9/11 first responders has come to. Behind me, a filled room of 9/11 first responders; and in front of me, a nearly empty Congress. … Your indifference cost these men and women their most valuable commodity -- time! It's the one thing they're running out of. This hearing should be flipped. These men and women should be up on that stage, and Congress should be down here, answering their questions as to why this is so damn hard and takes so damn long.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jon Stewart chokes up, gives angry speech to Congress" (CNN). Washington, June 11, 2019. Transcript 1, transcript 2.
“[The PACT Act] isn't a slush fund! You know what's a slush fund? The OCO -- the Overseas Contingency Operations Fund. 60 billion dollars, 70 billion dollars every year. On top of 500 billion dollars, 600 billion dollars, 700 billion dollars of a defense budget -- that's a slush fund. Unaccountable, no guardrails! Did Pat Toomey stand up and say "This is irresponsible! The guardrails!" No. Not one of 'em did. They vote for it year after year after year. You don't support the troops; you support the war machine! That's all you care about! [...] Boy, they haven't-- They haven't met a war they won't sign up for, and they haven't met a veteran they won't screw over! What the fuck are we?!”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Comedy doesn't change the world, but it's a bell-weather. We're the banana peel in the coal mine. When a society is under threat, comedians are the ones who get sent away first. It's just a reminder that democracy is under threat. Authoritarians are the threat -- to comedy, to art, to music, to thought, to poetry, to progress, to all those things! It's never been-- All that shit, it's a red herring. It ain't the Pronoun Police, it's the Secret Police. It always has been, and it always will be. And this man's decapitated visage is a reminder to all of us that what we have is fragile and precious. And the way to guard against it isn't to change how audiences think, it's to change how leaders lead.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source