John Oliver Quotes

Conservatives love to rail against “cancel culture” while trying to ban any speech they don’t like. So when it’s someone else’s symbol, it’s an affront that needs to be burned or banned, but when it’s theirs, it can be mandated by law, and anyone who doesn’t like it can just turn their head and not look.

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.

Listen, as a 47-year-old who looks like a 67-year-old, I clearly don’t understand TikTok, but I do know perfect film-making when I see it, and that right there is perfect film-making.

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.

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.

Okay, a few things. First, you don’t need a new dating app to find conservatives online. Just go onto any existing app and filter for people who describe their views as "moderate". Any single woman in a big city can tell you "moderate" just means "I’m a right-wing nut job, but I’d like to get laid, please".

Okay, that is essentially all the background you need to know about federal personnel management. If you’re bored, it’s over, and if you’re hard, welcome home.

Trump as president was sort of like a hamster in an attack helicopter. Sure, he wants to bathe the world in blood and terror—he wants it with his whole rotten hamster heart—but luckily he doesn’t know what buttons to press and his brain’s the size of a peanut, so that puts some hard limits on the damage he’s actually able to do.

That is really the Trump experience in a nutshell right there: hateful ideology, a promise to make life harder for minorities, all wrapped up in a non-sequitur so stupid it is inconveniently funny. The radical left invented trans people a few years ago? I’m sorry, what? Did they put it on Shark Tank and I somehow missed it?

The election is in full swing right now, and it's pretty much your usual campaign -- candidates offering policy proposals, trading barbs... and occasionally getting convicted of 34 felonies and complaining about the judge.

[Unless] we force the government and the handful of large companies that control this industry to change their priorities, we’re going to be stuck where we are, like a bunch of fifth graders in the world’s largest corn maze begging for our fucking lives.

Thinking of the negatives is pretty much all I do, along with speaking the negatives out loud and making jokes about the negatives all while modeling the latest suits from "Sir Michael Gambon’s Haberdashery for Oddly Long Gentlemen".

[There’s] no better tribute to [the Beatles'] legacy than having terrified children wander around Ringo’s nostrils wondering if they’ll ever see their families again.

[Between] the attempted assassination of a central European leader, and the rise of a far-right party in Germany, Europe really seems to be playing the 20th century hits right now, even if some of their former history teachers refuse to see the similarity.

Lots of people are 68, working, and paying taxes, and I’d venture to say most of them are not Nazi enthusiasts, other than, it seems, you and Mel Gibson.