Stephen Colbert Quotes

Author Image

Stephen Colbert

Profession : Comedian

Birth : May 13, 1964

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.

Stephen Colbert

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.

Stephen Colbert

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.

Stephen Colbert

Shamelessness is a wonderful part of the character.

Stephen Colbert

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.

Stephen Colbert

I not only loved studying theater, I loved being a theater major. It gave me an excuse to brood, to grow a beard, to wear black 'at' people. I didn't just want to play Hamlet, I wanted to be Hamlet.

Stephen Colbert

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.

Stephen Colbert

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.

Stephen Colbert

The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you.

Stephen Colbert

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.

Stephen Colbert

When my car runs out of gas, I buy a new one. I don't want to ride around in a quitter.

Stephen Colbert

I'm not here to affect you politically or socially. I'm here to make you laugh. I use the news as the palette for my jokes.

Stephen Colbert

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.

Stephen Colbert

You shouldn't listen to us at all if you're looking for information. We don't take ourselves seriously on any level; we're just comedians.

Stephen Colbert

I can't prove it, but I can say it.

Stephen Colbert

In order to be a top-tier candidate, I need 7.5 million dollars, and I currently have 0.0 million dollars.

Stephen Colbert

We have this idea in our minds that there's this separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. And we extend that to our politics - not just church and state, but it's also there's a separation of religion and politics. But of course there isn't.

Stephen Colbert

I'm a huge news junkie. I love what the news does.

Stephen Colbert

If I had free time to go to Los Angeles to shoot a movie, I would rather spend it with my kids.

Stephen Colbert

The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work.

Stephen Colbert