Top 15 John Oliver Quotes

If what you want is a centrist candidate that's quiet on trans issues, tough on the border, distances itself from Palestinians, talks a lot about law and order, and reaches out to moderate Republicans, that candidate existed, and she just lost!

Look, I know this isn't inspiring to hear, but politics isn't always inspiring; it's transactional. It rarely matches our greatest hopes and dreams. I'll be honest: I really didn't want the first vote I cast as an American citizen to be for Joe fucking Biden, but here we are. Here is how I look at it: The struggle for justice isn't just about what happens on election day. It's a fight waged constantly -- day in, day out. In protests on the streets, meetings with legislators, and in the thousand small actions that cumulatively move the government forward an inch at a time. Abbas Alawieh, the co-founder of the Uncommitted Movement, has urged Democrat voters to "pair their vote, their support for Vice President Harris with a public commitment to pressure her to stop sending weapons, should she become President. As for Ruwa Romman, she voted for Harris in Georgia -- another critical swing state -- while doing a vote swap with someone in a blue state who cast a protest vote on her behalf. And she explained her Harris vote by saying "My vote is a promise — a promise that I and those who stand with me will not stop demanding the end of mass slaughter and violence everywhere", and that is the point. Elections alone aren't sufficient for large-scale change, but they're absolutely necessary for it to ever happen. Because it's the day when essentially you get to choose who you'd prefer to be pushing for the next four years and where you'll be pushing them from. Look, I love this country. I'm an American. I chose to be here. In the words of the late Lee Greenwood, "I'm proud to be an American". And I'd argue there's nothing more American than having a healthy adversarial relationship with those in power, even if you voted for them!

I know it is hard to imagine things getting worse on this but to be fair, Trump has always been one to roll up his sleeves, throw on a very unflattering vest, and dig us into a new layer of hell.

Picking apart policy proposals when the alternative is Trump is a bit like debating which color to paint the living room when your house is on fucking fire! You kind of have to prioritize the imminent threat!

If you like that [RFK Jr.] is against polluters and Big Pharma, I get it! We criticize them all the time! But when we do that, we make sure we've got our facts right and don't just pull them out of the ass of our best workout jeans.

It is the ultimate conspiracist code -- "Nothing is a coincidence except when I do it".

Okay, so before we go any further, let me just say this: I also don't want to be doing this. I don't want to be debunking his arguments at length! […] But he's made so many confident assertions there, and if you leave even one unchallenged, people will think "Well, maybe there's something to it."

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 guess, at the very least, I just want my government to have the moral backbone that's been shown by Ben and fucking Jerry's. Please, just try not to get morally outflanked by the makers of Impretzively Fudged! That cannot be too much to ask!

Look, a phrase that gets brought up a lot with regard to Israel is "never again" -- an anti-genocide slogan often invoked in memory of the Holocaust, and it's always been open to two interpretations: there's the one that means "This must never again happen to the Jewish people", and the one that means "This must never again happen to any people anywhere." And in the West Bank, as in Gaza right now, it's pretty clear which one the Israeli government has favored.

Human dignity has to be a prerequisite for negotiating anything. And Palestinians in the West Bank have their dignity challenged hundreds of times a day! From having beer bottles thrown at their heads, to being detained for kicking balls near fences, to having their homes stolen, bulldozed, and far, far worse. And to be clear, dignity is the absolute beginning of this. What's required is justice. And the call for that is getting louder.

Wow. "I decide what the law is, and your actions are illegal." That is a bold fucking attitude. It's the sort of thing an American cop would only be comfortable tattooing above their sleeve line.

Does apartheid actually have a smell? Because I'll be honest, until now, I was pretty sure it had only produced the one kind of Musk.

The whole settlement project has been massively encouraged by the Israeli government to such a degree that it is hard to argue that living in one is an apolitical choice. Building on stolen land is an inherently political act. It is also, by the way, copyright infringement.

It's not like the Geneva Convention says "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies... unless there's, like, really convenient shopping and a super manageable commute to Jerusalem".