Stephen Colbert

"Jesse Jackson is here. I had him on the show. Very interesting and challenging interview. You can ask him anything, but he’s going to say what he wants at the pace that he wants. It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is."

"As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America — with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side. But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good — over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew."

"But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know — fiction."

"Then you write, "Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg."

"The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday — no matter what happened Tuesday."

"And though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion — be you Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim, I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior."

"By the way, Mr. President, thank you for agreeing to be on my show. I was just as shocked as everyone here is, I promise you. How's Tuesday for you? I've got Frank Rich, but we can bump him. And I mean bump him. I know a guy. Say the word."

"Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong, welcome! Your great country [of China] makes our Happy Meals possible!"

"I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible — I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical."

"Who's Britannica to tell me that the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say that it was built in 1941, that's my right as an American."

"And I just like the guy. He's a good joe. Obviously loves his wife, calls her his better half, and polls show America agrees."

"The other stunner that came out of the committee hearings was what the committee called the "big ripoff". The former president raised a quarter of a billion dollars off the big-lie, for a so-called "election defense fund", that investigators say, never existed... and this time we promise NO FRAUD."

"Yes, we all know the famous saying: where there’s smoke, there’s success."

"He took showers with the other pros..."

"Hey, there. How are you doing? If you watch this show regularly, I'm guessing you're not doing great. Yeah, me neither. You know, uh, today? Uh, some people said to me, "Sorry you have to do a show tonight." Which is nice of them to say, but I don't have to do a show, I get to do a show tonight. I'm so grateful to be with all of these talented people -- those people over here, those people that you'll never see... With the audience in the Ed Sullivan, with you people at home? Because, especially at times like this, what do we most want to be? Not alone. So thanks for being here. Uh, we're gonna do a comedy show, it's a comedy show, we're gonna do some jokes in just a minute. Uh, 'cause that's what we do. And I'll let you in on a little secret: No one gets into this business because everything in their life worked out great. So we're built for rough roads."

"The first time Donald Trump was elected, he started as a joke and ended as a tragedy. This time, he starts as a tragedy. Who knows what he'll end as?"

"This is rough. Last time Trump won, it felt like a grotesque fluke. This time, America knew exactly what they were getting and they went hard for him anyway. It's like that famous quote: "Those who do not learn from history... are me! Hey, that's me! Which reminds me, I wanted to look something up. Hey Google, did Joe Biden drop out of the election?""

"Oh, hey everybody. We got a great show for you tonight. Senator Adam Schiff was my guest. We harmonized on Seven Bridges Road. What a voice. I cried. But before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May. And… Yeah — I share your feelings — It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of The Late Show on CBS. I'm not being replaced — this is all just going away. And I do want to say… I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners. I'm so grateful to the Tiffany Network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home. And of course, I'm grateful to you, the audience, who have joined us every night in here, out there, all around the world, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea. I'm grateful to share the stage with this band, these artists over here every night. And I am extraordinarily deeply grateful to the 200 people who work here. We get to do this show. We get to do this show for each other every day, all day. And I've had the pleasure and the responsibility of sharing what we do every day with you in front of this camera for the last 10 years. And let me tell you, it is a fantastic job. I wish somebody else was getting it. And it's a job that I'm looking forward to doing with this usual gang of idiots for another 10 months. It's going to be fun. … Y'all ready?"

"It’s a great day to be me because I am not Donald Trump."

"Over the weekend it sunk in that they’re killing off our show. But they made one mistake: They left me alive!"

"Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism?: Go f-ck yourself."

"I can finally speak unvarnished truth to power and say what I really think about Donald Trump—starting right now. I don’t care for him. Doesn’t seem to have, like, the skillset to be President. Just not a good fit, you know?"

"It’s not a great look when you fly on the pedophile’s plane enough times to earn diamond pervert status."

"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition ... and then admit that we just don't want to do it."

"I was motivated to play Dungeons & Dragons. I mean highly, highly motivated to play it. Every day, if I could find someone to play with me. If I couldn't find someone to play with me, I would work on my player character."

"I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way. But, in sort of a James Bond-ian kind of explosives in the gas tank of his car kind of way."

"He's like a living wall of encyclopedias that like to drink beer."

"It's one thing for an asshole to play an asshole. But your basic decency can't be hidden."

"Part of the joy of being in character is being able to get away with things others cannot. Though a lot of that is that [he] is so high on Nyquil you never know what he's going to do."

"He's able to create a universe where something surreal happens on the program that seems ordinary, and all of a sudden the absurd appears not mundane but expected, organic... So he can have a conversation with Richard Holbrooke and Willie Nelson and it all makes perfect sense and yet it couldn't appear anywhere else without appearing burlesque. Somehow he has managed to create a fake world that has impacted and found standing in the real world."

"The thing about Colbert is he's fucking brilliant... He was always the smartest guy in the room, and he was always smart enough not to let you know he was the smartest guy in the room."

"His humor is an accumulation of the eccentricities, mannerisms and jokes of his ten older brothers and sisters, a medley that trickled down."

"Stephen used to play a manic conservative, and now, he plays a depressed liberal. That is range, ladies and gentlemen."

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