Ron White Quotes

If I can make you laugh and learn, I want to be like George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Sam Kinison and Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. I want to be of that ilk, I don't want to just make you laugh, I want to make you think.

Before I even knew what stand up was, I tried to make people laugh at school because that was how I made friends, so I think that's how I got drawn into comedy and obviously I was just some kid at school being silly, so the first time I saw a professional comedian and how smooth and funny the person was I totally got into standup and I would say obviously Richard Pryor was the guy. He's the greatest of all time and then George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Bill Cosby. It's so weird to bring up his name now but leaving out his off-stage antics... you could learn a lot from him.

The best kind of comedy to me is when you make people laugh at things they've never laughed at, and also take a light into the darkened corners of people's minds, exposing them to the light.

I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy - Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley - who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.

George Carlin was great right up to the end of his life. But Richard Pryor was probably the best, most gifted stand-up comedian who will ever live.

At the end of the day, I want to be part of the same conversation as Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.

When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'

I love astute observations and really great wordplay. I love the way that Louis C.K. observes life, and I love the way Patton Oswalt talks about it.

I get very confused about being called a comedian, because when you say 'I'm a comedian,' people expect you to crack a joke. Maybe I use laughter and humour to make people think. I don't know what you call that - a humourist? A satirist? A pessimistic comedian? I don't know. Satirists can be very dark.

It went from Bob Newhart to Flip Wilson to Bill Cosby to Richard Pryor to George Carlin to Cheech and Chong. I had all these records.

You look at Richard Pryor and Robert Klein and George Carlin and Richard Lewis - those guys were so smart, they were the thinking-man stand-ups.

I've always looked up to Amy Poehler and, obviously, people like Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Mel Brooks, and the 'Monty Python' guys.

The earliest stand-up comedy I was aware of was Bill Cosby. I watched Saturday Night Live as soon as I was aware of it, and Monty Python used to be on PBS at weird hours, so I used to try to watch that. And I loved George Carlin on SNL, that was the first stand-up I ever really remember seeing on TV. And then Steve Martin. I guess I was in fifth or sixth grade when Steve Martin showed up, and he was instantly my idol. And Richard Pryor around the same time too, I sort of became aware of him, though I don't remember the first time I saw him.

Comedy is brutal. It's powerful, though.

I think you can tell the human condition better through comedy.

I think seeing Pryor's first movie, Live In Concert, when I was in high school changed my life. Pryor really put the heart in darkness for me.

I don't really find things funny unless they're deeply tragic at the same time. I think if you're funny just for the sake of being funny, it's just frivolous nonsense. To me, all the best comic plays have been written about really serious and rather bleak things.

Anyone in the comedy world knows that Horatio Sanz and Chris Parnell are two of the funniest guys around.

Making people uncomfortable is one of my hobbies. I'm always hoping that half the people get the joke and the other half are the joke.

Show me one guy or woman as funny as Rodney Dangerfield or as good as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, or Joan Rivers. There are a lot of good comics out there, no doubt, but as far as the quality of the comics goes, I think what you have is a bunch of situational comics.

The best comedy to me - and again, I grew up with comedy since I was a baby, so I've seen it all - is when you exaggerate the truth, like Richard Pryor did, you understand?

Neil Hamburger writes such cutting jokes.

There are comedians who focus on everything that is external. They focus on politics and the news, what's going on in that city and that night.

Jon Stewart kills me. I love him. And Bill Maher. He does an hour on HBO. But entirely political. It is awfully rough, but he does make me laugh.

If you're watching a comedian on television and he's making a political point, I would say he's gotten too serious.