Stephen Colbert

“There's a degree of narcissism involved in anything in show business. I mean, you can't do it without a healthy ego. Why would you want anybody to listen to you?”

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

“I heard that after you throw away a 'New York Times,' it takes over a hundred years for the lies to biodegrade.”

“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.”

“I started as a straight actor. I'd go onstage, and I'd think, 'Wow, this is the only thing I want to work really hard at. I will rehearse fifty times on a single scene; I don't care - I'll d...”

“What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press.”

“Status is always ripe for satire, status is always good for comedy.”

“I believe gender is a spectrum, and I fall somewhere between Channing Tatum and Winnie the Pooh.”

“I don't perceive my role as a newsman at all. I'm a comedian from stem to stern. You can cut me open and count the rings of jokes.”

“I wrote things for the school's newspaper, and - like all teenagers - I dabbled in poetry.”

“Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers?”

“In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant. One motto on the show is, 'Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth.'”

“I spent my first two years at a small all-male college in Virginia called Hampden-Sydney. That was like going to college 120 years ago. The languages, a year of rhetoric, all of the great bo...”