John Oliver Quotes

[The] U.S., where our constitution guarantees virtually unlimited freedom of speech, except, of course, when the Supreme Court decides it’s cool for a public university to ban drag shows. Yeah, that happened two months ago. It’s kind of surprising no one flew a pride flag upside down on their lawn in protest.

I know I talk a lot on this show about the bad stuff Ronald Reagan did. So to balance that out, I do want to mention something positive he did for the planet. In 2004 – and this is true – he died.

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.

He's promised to be "the greatest environmental President in American history" and has talked about a bunch of things that we have covered, like so-called "forever chemicals" and PFAS and the proliferation of microplastics. You know, all the fun stuff that you expect from our "comedy" show. Which, at this point, should probably be called You Have Already Been Poisoned with the Duolingo Owl's Biological Uncle.

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!"

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.

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.

The deeper you look into these stories, the more flawed you realize things are, systemically. But the more you encounter people work incredibly hard to change things. Like clockwork, at some point during a story, I go into Tim [Carvell]'s office, who I... run the show with, and we'll say "Burn it down. Just burn everything to the ground." 'Cause it feels like things are so bad in a story, only flames are going to purify the hell that we've built for ourselves. But you do then work through that, much like this shitty hot sauce, to realizing that, in lieu of-— even as you're waiting for major change that you think might not come, incremental change is possible, and valuable.

Lest we forget, when Europe goes far right, they go far, right through Belgium.

When you fire everyone who knows what they’re doing and only hire people who will say yes to the rich guy in charge, that’s not a recipe for good government. It’s a recipe for the Titan Submersible. I don’t want scientific research about nuclear power being done by people without experience. I don’t want my latte being made by someone without experience. Oh, it’s your first day? I’m sorry, step aside, please. Give me the barista with a sleeve of techno-tan stick-and-poke tattoos and a septum piercing who’s worked here for five years and who hates everybody here. Experience matters.

Project 2025 is born from an impulse as old as America. It’s an impulse that says "one class of Americans is entitled to lead, and the rest of us are lucky to be allowed to serve". That thinks there should be a limited government when it comes to rules they have to live by, but also a unitary executive to keep the rest of us in line. These are old, old ideas that have been shouted from podiums by the likes of George Wallace and Pat Buchanan but have now been placed into a new handbook for an only-too-willing president to use on day one. And in a perfect world, I would love if we had an opposing party better able to articulate a strong defense of our country’s ideals and that also consistently lived up to them. People are entitled to hope for more from the next four years than someone just not being Trump and for at least two Supreme Court justices to die. I’m not saying which ones I would prefer, but I think we all have our top two. And for anyone tempted to think, "Well, we survived Trump’s first term," first, not everyone did. And it should hopefully be very clear by now: a second Trump term really does promise to be far, far worse. Because if Trump’s first term was defined by chaos, his second could be defined by ruthless efficiency, and that should be troubling to absolutely everyone, because Project 2025 is a movement whose members joke about wanting a white homeland and insist women have to have more babies to uphold Western society. And its work could be about to be funneled through a man who happily calls his fellow Americans “vermin.” It is not subtle, it’s hard to miss, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

If a wild badger broke into your home and fucked everything up for 14 straight years, tearing everything apart, you can argue about redecorating choices later, right now, that badger’s got to fucking go. And I will say, if the U.K. can successfully rid itself of the Tories next month, that’s not cause for a shrug, that’s cause for a celebration. And I know that celebration’s not something that comes naturally to Britons. The country’s most famous motivational slogan is “Keep Calm and Carry On” and even that morale booster basically amounted to, “I know you’re about to die, but there’s no need to make a scene.” That was supposed to get us through World War II! But if Britain can extricate itself from the party whose unremitting cruelty has stained the last decade and a half of British life, that does deserve to be marked.

There are so many things we, as Americans, do have to resign ourselves to: airline cancellations, a national anthem with too many high notes, Glen Powell inevitably starring in a Field of Dreams remake. We can’t fight those things. But we can, and must fight this. And at the end of this week, it should be clear to absolutely everyone: it doesn’t matter if Trump and his party say they have a "new tone" or nominally call for "unity," or throw a cute dog onstage for some reason. They have told us who they are, they’ve told us what they want, they literally put it on a sign and waved it in everyone’s face. They’re trying to win this election by pointing a finger at immigrants, and the only appropriate response is to take a cue from the so-called "symbol of the Biden presidency" and say "fuck that shit!"

I started looking into these groups in America, campaigns groups who want to put stickers on the front of all school science text books saying that Evolution is only one possible theory of life on earth. Now, although this seems like a stupid idea at first, second, and thirty ninth glance, look at it once more. Give it that fortieth view. Because it's brilliant. Let's have stickers on the front of all books! Slap one on the front of the Bible saying "Of course this could all be bullsh*t. Maybe he never died! Perhaps he opened a donkey sanctuary. He had a clear bond with donkeys." Or slap one on the Theory of Gravity! "Look, that's just one man's opinion. Maybe we could all fly! R. Kelly believed it so. Why would he lie to us? What does he possibly stand to gain?"

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.)