Nish Kumar Quotes

Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert. Those are the guys I look at who are telling me pretty much the truth. And they throw humor into it which makes it much more interesting to listen to.

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 love, for example, 'Full Frontal with Sam Bee.' I just love her show.

I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me.

Politics is developing more comedians than radio ever did.

Social satire has been around since people have been around.

For me, my party views don't advance my narrative. Until I can find a way to write political satire like my idols Christopher Buckley or P.J. O'Rourke, I'll simply say what team I play for and leave it at that.

Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.

I know these jokes aren't great, ladies and gentlemen, see this is the problem you run into when you're between impeachments.

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

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.

I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy.

Why should I be feeling tension? It's The Daily Show.

The White House is giving George W. Bush intelligence briefings. You know, some of these jokes just write themselves.

A lot of people who claim they're political comedians are just comedians who have opinions. But they stop being funny the minute they give their opinions.

You know, I'm a comedian the same as Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. We all came up the same way. The three of us have interest in politics; I call us fundits, we're fundits! We're not pundits!

For me, comedy is a day-to-day report on the human condition. It's what's happening right now. I get maybe 20 minutes of my act straight from the newspaper.

I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early '70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire.

Sometimes people say I'm a political comedian, which, actually I'm not. I'm a comedian who sometimes discusses politics, culture - again, the word 'politics' to me is just life.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

I get all of my comedy from CNN.

I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime.

I decide who's right and who's wrong, and go from there. But I can't just comment on an issue. I've got to take an editorial position. Too many cartoonists simply illustrate the news. Well, the readers know the news, and a cartoon that illustrates doesn't tell them a thing they don't already know. So, I formulate an opinion and draw it.

I just write and do what I think is funny. Sometimes, you do have it in your head about certain bits. There are certain jokes where I know if I did them in certain situations, it would irk people. There are times where I look at the news and see a story going on, and I'm like, 'Wow, if I tweeted this, I would get press if I wanted to.'

I feel like comedy is important, and I think political satire can be really important.