Colin Jost Quotes

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

I think politics is always about dialogue. I think journalism ranges from dialogue to monologue, and there are times when different poles are necessary.

Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren't interested in), people don't speak their beliefs easily, or publicly.

The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.

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.

I don't like the tendency on the part of so many people today to think that those who don't agree with them are bad. In fact, I find that very dangerous.

The most active people in the country know different things, and because each one tends to hear mostly and deal mostly with people with whom they agree, they are reinforced not simply in the conviction that they are right, which is totally appropriate, but that they are the majority. So you have both sides, the Left and the Right, thinking that the majority of the country is really with them.

I think politics have gotten vulgar and we comedically portray that.

If people want to criticize a performance, that I understand. I think that's important. What's going on with this industry now is crazy. That obsession with celebrity is madness. I try as hard as I can not to read that stuff. Because most of the time it's a bit... factual. And it's frustrating because it's not about what you're setting out to do as an actor.

I think a lot of the people that stand by Donald Trump are deplorable. And the things that they say are deplorable.

If you can just convince the dope people that the gun people are right and the gun people that the dope people are right, we could actually live in a lot more freedom.

I'll probably lose every friend I've got, but I think the Russians are about the only people who have behaved decently in the conflict with the Ukraine. All the evidence to the contrary seems a bit bogus to me. NATO is trying to use Ukraine to isolate and cripple Russia, and that's completely crazy and very cruel. It seems to me that our side, the English and American people, really want it to go bad there. But there's no need for it to have done so. At least that's what I think. You won't hear a lot of that on Fox News.

Instead of engaging on the merits and saying, "Well, we want an open border, you know, we really do," and that's all good for America because they know the people will reject that, they [the elites] attack Donald Trump as an extremist, which I think is unfair.

There's a lot of people that don't understand liberalism, there are a lot of people that I think, by definition, still need to be informed and educated that it isn't the soft, loving, compassionate stuff that it's portrayed to be. Trump speaks for himself. Who Trump is and what he's doing is not a mystery to anybody. It's the exact opposite of a mystery. It's in your face.

There's a big thing right now with people using stand-up as a scapegoat. People think comedians have the power to change someone in an hour. If we had that ability, the art would not be legal. It would too dangerous.

I really will never understand pushing back on comedians who are like, "I'm like a politician campaigning and shaking hands with these people. They're going to be okay."

I don't think that politics are as complex as people like to make them seem or out to be.

People think I'm crazy, but I'm in demand.

I think people are afraid to express their opinions half the time.

For 18 months, leading up to the November election, I did everything in my power to show how ridiculous and crazy Trump's rhetoric was. I literally did a piece called "Donald Trump Is White ISIS." But, partisanship aside, there's a huge populace of people that were like, "I hear what you're saying, but I need something to change in my life, and I would like to have a representative that I think will do that for me."

I think, in my own state, I can tell you that people do want to hear a serious discussion on serious issues.

I think people have made their minds up about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. They love them and hate them - love them or hate them.

Speaking for myself, I try to go out there on the stage and make jokes with people, so I'm not really thinking about the impact anything I have. If it does resonate with people, that's really great.

Now, I think the people who are still doing stand-up are doing it because they love stand-up.