Terry Gross Quotes

I think humor is actually a very serious thing. I think the people who shaped culture, for the better, in the last 50 years or so, more than almost anyone else are people like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor and even Chris Rock, back when he was doing the edgier stuff.

Comedians play off of social commentary.

Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about, and that's really it. I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change, but I am far lazier than that.

I think comedy is a really, really good tool for trying to say something.

I think the job of a comedian is to make people laugh, but also challenge them to laugh at things they didn't know they could until now.

I was heavily influenced by Andy Kaufman and Steven Wright.

A sitcom isn't usually the right tool for satire.

I think comedy does have that powerful thing that doesn't seem too preachy because you're also making people laugh, so it's really kind of a good tool for messaging.

I'm a comic, and I'm supposed to outrage and make people laugh, Part of makin' people laugh is to shake up their thinkin'. That's what I came here to do.

I don't want to offend people and I don't want to be mean, but social commentary and comedy for me are part and parcel. I think the greatest social activists are comedians.

I think that comedy is one of the more serious things that you can do in our day, especially in the world that we're living in.

I think, through comedy, sometimes we're allowed to discuss things that you'd never be able to talk about in a drama.

I had seen movies before that that had made me laugh, but I had never seen anything even remotely close to as funny as Richard Pryor was, just standing there talking.

The first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren't laughing, it's not comedy. It's as simple as that.

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.

Comedy has become, I think, a very important branch of public intellectualism. But it still ain't Washington.

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

I've always thought George Carlin was brilliant.

Show me a novel that's not comic, and I'll show you a novel that's not doing its job.

I love doing stand up. I think it's a really worthwhile art form. It's so unique in all the things it combines, in terms of it being philosophizing, preaching, speaking truth to power and basic communicating. It's a good way to talk back to the world.

What intrigues me is that there are funny people in the real East End. It's famous for it. There'd be blokes dressing up as women as a lark, but 'EastEnders' seems blind to the fact that they enjoy a laugh. There should be a cheery chappy on there.

A lot of French comedy is satire.

'The Dictator' - well, that was just a comedy, and I suppose the morality was incidental. It was just something to try and make people laugh rather than being a serious thing.

Comedy can be destructive, and still very, very funny. But if I can do something that is fun to watch and critical of the world but not wantonly destructive, I pursue those kinds of ideas more. The world needs less destruction. And destruction is kind of “easy,” too.