Ramy Youssef Quotes

Jon Stewart is exactly the same guy he's always been, only with money. He knows that the moment he really believes he's important, the funny goes away and he becomes Bill O'Reilly, except shorter and Jewish.

I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.

Sometimes the best way to make 'em laugh is to show 'em how you honestly feel.

I think comedy stems from being honest, often painfully so. I hope I can achieve that perspective in my own life and also have fun.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

Activism isn't about holding your faults up to the light. That's what comedy is about, it's about saying, 'Look at this person who is so flawed and frail and damaged. And we're all this frail and damaged so let's laugh at it.'

I don't just try to be funny.

I definitely prefer working in comedy over drama, but at the same time, when it comes to comedy, I tend to prefer comedies that have a great sense of truth to them and that come from an honest place.

I love Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart because they're bringing irony back into American humor, which is a delicious treat. The entire Colbert persona of being extreme right-wing when he's not at all is highly amusing. He does it so well, but sometimes a little too well. My wife is convinced he's completely that way.

Sure, I am funny and have a good sense of humor. Mostly, though, I just tell the truth. The internal dialogue people have in their heads - I just write it.

I don't consider myself a political comedian because it's so hard. It takes time away from me saying terrible things about TV.

I've always had a sick sense of humor, and I've always wanted that to permeate the music because I don't take myself seriously. I take the music seriously, but I know I'm not God's gift to anyone except my mom.

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.

Laughter is the best way to get over something or get closer to something. It's one of the things I respect most about Amy Schumer. She's found a way to get us closer to ourselves and see the ugly side of humanity, but not in a way that's pointing a finger or that's angry. She does it in a way that makes us see the absurdity and laugh at it.

I don't think it's wrong to make fun of some of the stuff that we think and we do.

'The Daily Show' was amazing because I learned so much.

Drag has always been the thing you turn to to remember to not take yourself too seriously.

The thing about comedy is it gives you a platform to expose your own shortcomings, so it becomes a public display of weirdness.

I'm a funny guy. I want people to laugh. I laugh at myself, I make fun of myself. But at the end of the day everything that I say has a message in it.

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 think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces.

I suppose I look for humor in most situations because it humanizes things; it makes a character much more three-dimensional if there's some kind of humor. Not necessarily laugh-out-loud type of stuff, just a sense that there is a humorous edge to things. I do like that.

When you take a character seriously, there's more room for comedy because you're not aware of how absurd you are.

A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it.