Sacha Baron Cohen Quotes

Blacks had survived every form of human debasement with ingenuity, self-reliance, a deep and ironic humor, a capacity for self-reinvention and a heroic fortitude. But we had no experience of wide-open freedom.

I knew racial discrimination at its worst in the 1930s. I lived with the humility of it but I never lost my sense of humor. Humor is the escape valve from the deadly reality of adversity.

We are powerful because we have survived

Freud was the son of a Jewish merchant who had to move his whole family to Vienna because he couldn't get work. He, as a boy, had to watch his father be mocked and abused on the street for being Jewish... You develop a thick skin and you develop a certain kind of wit to defend yourself.

I want readers to rehearse that day when everything shatters and think through what they'll hang onto when that happens.

When I was growing up, I was obviously gay, and I got heckled every day of my life. The only way I knew how to survive was to make people laugh. If I could make them laugh, I wouldn't get hung in a locker for two hours. That's a blessing.

People in Russia adapt to misery by a deep, deep humor.

Jews, black people - any people who are hated or who have suffered, either as individuals or as a people - use humour. It is a survival skill.

Faced with destruction, the Jewish people survived.

Certainly, anyone whom I've witnessed, who has gone through something horrible and life-changing, has a sense of ironic humor, or an ability to look at the peculiarities of the world and find humor in it.

I thought I was going to be killed. The casualties were so heavy, it was just a given. I learned to take each day, each mission, as it came. That's an attitude I've carried into my professional life. I take each case, each job, as it comes.

I'm a survivor, at least that's what everyone tells me.

We imagine things - that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. We have no choice, so we do it.

The power organisation of Israel gives what they can to fight me, to cause me some harm, damages in health, mind, and they succeed little bit, but I survived and I am now free, but it was very hard - a very difficult time - and I wish no one would suffer what I suffered, and then when I speak to you and try to be human being like everyone.

My mother had a horrific life. At fourteen, she was in the Nazi concentration camps. Her sense about life now is, every day above ground is a good day.

I had a husband who stayed with me, and small children, and I had no choice but to pull myself together and rebuild a different kind of life. There was no other choice.

Well, I'm using a cane, so what? So what if they shot me sitting in a wheelchair? That's life!

More than a victim, I am a survivor of a dehumanization process.

I had a lot of racism growing up where I grew up. Bullied at school. It definitely encouraged me. It's like battle wounds - you come out the other side, and it just makes you tougher.

Humor is not a sign of weakness. In fact, humor can be your greatest asset in the face of tragedy.

I never hate my bullies from high school. I actually kind of appreciate them. If it wasn't for that boot camp training of how the world treats gay people and especially drag queens, I don't know if I would have survived as well as I have.

I've been sued, harassed, abused, but I've held my own.

As a species, we would not have survived without humor.

I wasn't willing to be a victim. I only wanted to survive, and I only wanted to get through.

Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh - because if you don't laugh you're going to cry and never stop crying - that's probably what's responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor. The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh.