Stand Up Comedians

"[About vaccination mandates after the Covid-19 pandemic:] I'm against mandates and I'm against mandates of vaccination, right? People are free to have the vaccination, people are free to wear a mask, people are free to do whatever they want, right? But I think, if you look back, the idea that people shouldn't be forcebly injected with medical things that they don't wish to have came out in 1945 for very good fucking reason. Very good reason. And the fact that that became a controversial thing to say... No! No, no, no. People came together in Nuremberg for a very good reason and decided we're not going to let this happen again. And the fact that people were willing to just completely overlook that. This is the thing, they flip everything on its head."

"[About the importance of saying what you think]: We come from generations of people who were killed for their beliefs. Well, I'm not going to dishonor them."

"Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists."

"One of the things people don't say enough about free speech is "Yes, it causes harm but the harm is worth it." And we don't make that argument because it's too honest and complicated and unpleasant."

"This country is responsible for 2 percent of global carbon emissions, which means that if Britain was to sink into the sea right now it would make absolutely no difference to the issue of climate change. You know why? Because the future of the climate is going to be decided in Asia and in Latin America. By poor people who couldn't give a shit about saving the climate. [...] Do you know why? Because they're poor. [...] 120 million people in China do not have enough food. I don't mean that they don't get dessert, I mean they suffer from malnutrition. That means that their immune system is breaking down because they don't have enough food. You're not going to get them to stay poor."

"I actually get invited on TV a lot nowadays, and I don't do as much of it as I used to. And part of the reason is that once you've [got] the heroin of a long term conversation, why would you drop down to methadone? This is so much more fulfilling and satisfying. We're sitting here for a good chunk of time, you're giving me the space to speak, you're not talking over me, you're not trying to make me look bad [...], and [in corporate media] you get three minutes to make one point. And look, there's a market out there for that [but] I enjoy this. I enjoy having a conversation [and] connecting with somebody, getting to know how they think and them getting to know how I think, disagreeing where there's disagreement but doing it in a constructive way as opposed to going for the click bait and all of that. That is a really fulfilling part of doing Triggernometry for me. We get to interview fascinating people [...] and we just sit and learn. [...] How many people get the opportunity to sit down with a great mind for an hour and just engage, and speak, and listen, and think about the world? To me, that is incredibly gratifying. And I don't think that if i was hosting something on TV [that] I'd get a chance to do that."

"Soviet citizens, including my great-grandparents, who made statements that were regarded as problematic by the authorities, were told, ‘Comrade, this may be factually correct but it is politically incorrect.’ In other words, political correctness originates from the desire to suppress the truth in order to protect and advance the prevailing political narrative of the day. How things haven’t changed!"

"Ultimately, they know that for a stable society to exist, there must be a common language that everyone uses to communicate on the same basis of understanding. This is no good to radicals who thrive on conflict, because without societal infighting they cannot offer their agenda in the guise of a solution. This is why they stoke division through words and meaning."

"Pavlik Morozov was murdered by his own family in retribution. But, eerily, I still catch glimpses of him in modern Western society, especially at this point in time, when we are routinely encouraged to put politics before the person, snitch on each other via government hotlines and prove our devotion to idealistic agendas."

"My point is that the overwhelming majority of the things that are now described as ‘racism’, ‘xenophobia’ and ‘bigotry’ are simply a product of the fact that we now see everything through the prism of race. I was lucky to be denied the opportunity to do so."

"Many comedians I’ve spoken to agree that this kind of entitled, moralistic response is more commonplace than ever before. Perhaps it’s related to what psychologists have identified as a general escalation of narcissistic behaviour. Or maybe it’s an inevitable by-product of social media, through which offence-seeking has turned into a kind of amateur sport."

"But it’s not only comics who are self-censoring: increasing numbers of audience members are filing complaints against venues for allowing acts to ‘upset’ them. Years ago, such people would’ve been laughed out of town and told to grow up, but these days they’re taken seriously."

"Rather than us exporting liberal democracy to these countries instead we're importing Chinese-style authoritarianism."

"Just as journalists have turned into activists, so too have comedians. Not all, but a large number. They have morphed into representatives of a political agenda and they’ll censor anyone who doesn’t help them further it. They don’t want to criticise what you do or what you say or engage in debate; that would be a waste of time. They simply want to punish you, silence you and achieve their political goals by any means necessary."

"Modern life has become Orwellian and—in many ways—we’re all 1984’s Winston Smith now."

"This whole idea that the only reason people keep nattering on about free speech is that they want to use racist language and promote bigotry—that’s ignorant."

"I'm a non-believer, but I can't help but think that what we've created as a society when we killed God is a vacuum that inevitably has to be filled. And when it gets filled, it gets filled by a new religion which is what social justice and intersectionality and all of that now is. They have priests. They have inquisitions. The only thing they don't have in that religion is redemption and forgiveness. [...] If we don't have forgiveness, I don't understand how this world is gonna work. I honestly don't."

"(About the 2018 interview Cathy Newman did with Jordan Peterson): I can't understand how no one in Channel four saw that and went "We can't possibly put this out there. It's embarrassing." but they did and they got the attention they deserved. But what they don't realize, these people, is it's one time attention. You watch that interview and you will never watch an interview with Cathy Newman again."

"Free speech is not some right-wing reframing of whatever; it is the foundation of Western civilization."

"The only way to deal with the problem of racism is to treat people on the content of their character and nothing else, and the fact that woke culture seeks to overturn that is a new form of racism that we must all oppose."

"If the right loses the ability to say what it wishes, then that’s a loss for the left as well, because sooner or later that restriction is going to hit them. That’s a mistake that the millennial left tend to make. They think they’re always going to be in a position of calling the shots and making the rules, because they’re so right-on and woke. They think a climate of fear isn’t going to affect them, because they always have the correct opinions, but this is a huge mistake. It’s like young people thinking that they’re always going to be young."

"When you have some kid, who works for Twitter in the Philippines, censoring a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, speaking about his area of expertise, I think we've lost the plot."

"Francis Foster: Everybody knows that Joe Biden isn't in charge. He simply can't be. Konstantin Kisin: He could be, but that's worse."

"During the whole Ngozi Fulani affair, it was covered like it was a terrorist attack when you sort of think there's probably much bigger core issues affecting way more people."

"We woke up on October 8 to the clamor of street protests in cities across the West condemning Israel even before any major Israeli response to the attacks. We watched celebratory crowds brandish swastikas and chant “gas the Jews” at events purporting to be about the loss of Palestinian lives. We saw Black Lives Matter chapters lionize terrorists."

"The events of the last two weeks have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power. And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree."

"Western civilization has produced some of the most stunning scientific, technological, social, and cultural breakthroughs in human history. If you consider yourself “liberal” or even “progressive,” it must surely be clear by now that America and her allies are the only places in the world where your values are even considered values. If our civilization is allowed to collapse, it will not be replaced by a progressive utopia. It will be replaced by chaos and barbarism."

"When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."

"The reality of life under the USSR is not something most people can accurately comprehend now, because it happened before most millennials were born and thus preceded the advent of social media, which means to most of my peers it might as well never have happened at all."

"Put simply, suppression of free speech is a symptom of tyranny."

"If there is one thing my Soviet childhood taught me, it’s that subscribing to someone else’s ideology will always inevitably mean having to suspend your own judgment about right and wrong to appease your tribe. I refuse to do so."

"This is why so few Russians are rarely, if ever, progressive liberals. They are too busy dealing with the harsh realities of life, such as having to pay the rent or feed their children on a shoestring budget, to partake in self-righteousness and identity politics."

"What I experienced is in this indigenous setting and I cannot abandon all these or throw it away. The fact that you are educated should not mean throwing away your indigenous culture."

"They say Fame is nothing but Grace is everything and I pray for grace in everything I do."

"I dedicate this to every mother, may God make you strong enough to survive and enjoy the fruit of your labour."

"Most people who started theartre started it with passion and not money. But the new practitioners are more interested in money. They don’t show passion. What they don’t know is that money comes when the passion is there."

"If a man wants to marry me now, it should be more convenient when he just wants to beat me."

"The supermodels all have skeletal bodies . . . the very existence of their bodies expresses an attitude: the disdain for men. The more men like a certain part of their bodies, the less they want to grow that part. Fashion is such an attitude."

"To be honest, I thought at first that it was an advantage for women to stand alone, because the most important thing for actors is to have their own labels on stage, and actresses carry their own labels. My image on stage has always been that of a girl who is single, who wants to fall in love and who is not particular about being particular."

"Intel is so picky about laptops, they’re even more selective than my taste in men."

"A joke can only get laughs for one reason because it resonates."

"As men, you stand at the center of the universe. You spout pearls of wisdom that shape the future of the world. So when your female friend comes to you, you might wonder: ‘Is she hoping to share her sadness with me? No, she must be hoping to learn something from me!’"

"My mother never urged me to have a blind date again. She felt that if a man wanted to marry me, it might just be more convenient for him to beat me. In this world, all girls will get sympathy when they encounter domestic violence."

"Men are adorable, but mysterious...How can he be so average, yet so full of confidence?"

"Regarding the change in identity, I actually took the initiative to accept and work hard to change in this direction, because I feel that growing up on the stage is not as rewarding as recording a show, and I am still eager to go."

"Unlike women, who always think of themselves as unimportant, men always think of themselves as the center of the universe. Every single sentence from men carries utmost importance, and points out the right direction in which the world should advance."

"It wasn't until I saw the comments that I realised some people reacted aggressively towards my performance. It kind of scared me. I felt like I was dragged into a war I didn't start. I'm only trying to be funny. In fact, in the same performance, I also ridiculed women for being emotional, but I didn't receive any hateful comments or threats from female netizens. Women have most likely become used to their stereotypical weakness being made fun of, while men have heard so few jokes like this before."

"I was researching Mrs Brown’s Boys and found that, with music hall, Laurel and Hardy, Les Dawson, Dick Emery and so on, more men had played working-class women in British comedy than women. [...] That's up until Victoria Wood. She almost single-handedly changed that. She and Billy Connolly essentially prepared the way for alternative comedy and the rise of the stand-up — bridging the gap between the working men's clubs and the comedy clubs. Before her, funny women were from a rarefied sphere like Joyce Grenfell. Wood spoke the way real people spoke and she was hugely successful. She made it possible for Tracey Ullman, even Peter Kay, to think a career was possible."

"I don’t say 'who'. I do say 'whom'. I never use the toilet, just the smallest room. I don't say gay. I still say queer. I think that Mussolini had the right idea."

"I once went to one of those parties where everyone throws their car keys into the middle of the room. I don’t know who got my moped but I’ve been driving that Peugeot for years."