Stephen Colbert

I like to do things that are publicly embarrassing, to feel the embarrassment touch me and sink into me and then be gone. I like getting on elevators and singing too loudly in that small space. The feeling you feel is almost like a vapor. The discomfort and the wishing that it would end that comes around you.

I'm very comfortable with uncomfortable situations, and I think that can seem odd to people, that I like the thrill of discomfort.

I spent my first two years at a small all-male college in Virginia called Hampden-Sydney. That was like going to college 120 years ago. The languages, a year of rhetoric, all of the great books, Western Man courses, stuff like that.

I'm a junkie for exhaustion, and I'm a junkie for setting up my expectations too high and then trying to meet them.

I do love my country. I don't think I'm particularly a good American. I don't know what makes a good American. Other than somebody who - I like people who let other people alone. I think that's a pretty good American. And I keep my hands to myself. So I'm an OK American.

I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime.

The truthiness is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news 'at' you.

There's nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell.

Librarians hoard the wisdom of humanity. They are the keepers of all knowledge, the guardians at the temples of understanding and devoted protectors of the sanctuary in the midst of uneducated anarchy.

Shamelessness is a wonderful part of the character.

A father has to be a provider a teacher a role model but most importantly a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise how will children ever understand the concept of God

Make no mistake: I love women. I'm married to one, I was birthed by one, and I played one in my high school production of 'Romeo and Juliet.' No one else could fit into the bodice.

What does Karl Marx put on his pasta? Communist Manipesto!

NASA scientists have discovered a new form of life, unfortunately, it won't date them either.

In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter.

I have tender feelings for Nixon because everybody has warm feelings about their childhood. Actually, I didn't like the Watergate trials 'cause they interrupted 'The Munsters.'

Late-night shows are 'Chopped.' Who are your guests tonight? Your guests tonight are veal tongue, coffee grounds and gummy bears. There, make a show ... Make an appetizer that appeals to millions of people. That's what I like. How could you possibly do it? Oh, you bring in your own flavors. Your own house band is another flavor.

When I got to 'The Daily Show,' they asked me to have a political opinion. It turned out that I had one, but I didn't realize quite how liberal I was until I was asked to make passionate comedic choices as opposed to necessarily successful comedic choices.

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.

I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.

I loved George Carlin and Dean Martin. I was one of those kids who had every comedy album.

I'm not here to affect you politically or socially. I'm here to make you laugh. I use the news as the palette for my jokes.

Gravitas is the soup bone in the stew of television news.

Life is an improvisation. You have no idea whats going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along.

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don't know whether it's a new thing, but it's certainly a current thing, in that it doesn't seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.

I started as a straight actor. I'd go onstage, and I'd think, 'Wow, this is the only thing I want to work really hard at. I will rehearse fifty times on a single scene; I don't care - I'll do it again.'

The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you.

When my car runs out of gas, I buy a new one. I don't want to ride around in a quitter.

My father always wanted to be 'Col-bear.' He lived in the same town as his father, and his father didn't like the idea of the name with the French pronunciation. So my father said to us, 'Do what you want. You're not going to offend anybody.' And he was dead long before I made my decision.

Simply being a guest on David Letterman's show has been a highlight of my career. I never dreamed that I would follow in his footsteps, though everyone in late night follows Dave's lead. I'm thrilled and grateful that CBS chose me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go grind a gap in my front teeth.

I look, absolutely, like I'm going to sell you insurance.

Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly cynics.

Theres nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell.

There's a degree of narcissism involved in anything in show business. I mean, you can't do it without a healthy ego. Why would you want anybody to listen to you?

I liked comedy as a kid. When I was a kid, I'd go to sleep to, like, Bill Cosby albums every night. I'd listen to 'Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow... Right!' and 'Wonderfulness,' which are two of his most famous albums. Then the next night, I'd flip them over, 'cause it was the old stackable turntable.

You shouldn't listen to us at all if you're looking for information. We don't take ourselves seriously on any level; we're just comedians.

I love being onstage. I love the relationship with the audience. I love the letting go, the sense of discovery, the improvising.

All I can do is today and tomorrow and have some idea of what we're doing next week. That's all I can worry about.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty.

In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant. One motto on the show is, 'Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth.'

We have this idea in our minds that there's this separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. And we extend that to our politics - not just church and state, but it's also there's a separation of religion and politics. But of course there isn't.

Thankfully, dreams can change. If we'd all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses.

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.

Thanksgiving is a magical time of year when families across the country join together to raise Americas obesity statistics. Personally I love Thanksgiving traditions watching football making pumpkin pie and saying the magic phrase that sends your aunt storming out of the dining room to sit in her car.

I heard that after you throw away a 'New York Times,' it takes over a hundred years for the lies to biodegrade.

In order to be a top-tier candidate, I need 7.5 million dollars, and I currently have 0.0 million dollars.

My mom kind of led me toward acting. She wanted to be an actress when she was younger. That made me interested in it when I was a kid, because she and I are very close.

I don't accept the status quo. I do accept Visa, MasterCard, or American Express.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics dont learn anything. Because cynicism is a self imposed blindness a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.

I love 'Sunday in the Park with George.' I saw that when I was just, just starting theater school, and I remember singing 'Finishing the Hat' or at least reading the lyrics to 'Finishing the Hat' and other songs from 'Sunday in the Park with George' to my mom to try to explain why I wanted to be an artist.

I can't prove it, but I can say it.

I'm a huge news junkie. I love what the news does.

I have a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College in Illinois. All I did was give a speech, and now everybody has to call me Dr. Colbert.

What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press.

Use the word 'zeitgeist' as often as possible. Ideally, you want to find words that sound familiar but people don't really know their definitions: 'zeitgeist,' 'bildungsroman,' 'doppelganger' - better yet, anything Latin. But avoid 'paradigm.' It's so 1994. If you say the word 'paradigm,' everybody knows you're a poser.

I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time, that I used to be a professional ice-skater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am?

That's my parenting style - 'Go watch the TV.' I'm one of 11 children, and my mother's parenting style was, 'There's the TV. Go watch it. Mommy's got 10 other people to take care of.'

I would say laughter is the best medicine. But it's more than that. It's an entire regime of antibiotics and steroids. Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche and then applies an antibiotic cream. You gotta keep it away from your eyes.

I have a morality. I don't know if it's the best morality. And I do like thinking. If people perceive that as a moral intellectualism, that's fine. That's up to them to decide.

I'm not just a pundit - I'm a comedian.

We are thrilled that Jon Batiste is joining 'The Late Show' family of products. For my money, nobody plays like Jon Batiste. And you can trust me, because it is my money.

A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?

You can't really be passionately moderate. It's like wearing an 'Extra Medium' - it doesn't exist.

Isn't an agnostic just an atheist without balls?

I don't like books, they're all fact, no heart.

I am highly variable in my devotion. From a doctrinal point of view or a dogmatic point of view or a strictly Catholic adherent point of view, I'm first to say that I talk a good game, but I don't know how good I am about it in practice.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. Its certainty.

A new study shows that having a severe phobia can hasten aging. But what if my greatest fear IS aging?!?

Status is always ripe for satire, status is always good for comedy.

If you don't give power to the words that people throw at you to hurt you, they don't hurt you anymore. And you actually have power over those people.

I don't perceive my role as a newsman at all. I'm a comedian from stem to stern. You can cut me open and count the rings of jokes.

My brother Billy was the joke teller. My brother Jim had a really sharp, cutting wit. And the teller of long stories, that was my brother Ed. As a child, I just absorbed everything they said, and I was always in competition for the laughs.

The letters that say 'I'm getting the messages you're sending me through the television screen' are not great. But those are few and far between, thank God. I get wonderful letters, and people send me artwork.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say 'no.' But saying 'yes' begins things. Saying 'yes' is how things grow.

Vodka eyeballing sounds great, but it's a slippery slope. Next, you'll be scotch nostriling, tequila nippling and, before you know it, Jager tainting.

The first time I met Jon Stewart was at the press conference that Comedy Central held to announce Jon would be the new host of 'The Daily Show,' which back then was not called 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.'

I not only loved studying theater, I loved being a theater major. It gave me an excuse to brood, to grow a beard, to wear black 'at' people. I didn't just want to play Hamlet, I wanted to be Hamlet.

I believe gender is a spectrum, and I fall somewhere between Channing Tatum and Winnie the Pooh.

My favorite off-camera memory of Jon Stewart is watching him jump from the second level of a tuna tower into the waters off Grand Cayman.

Don't be afraid to make things up. Never fear being exposed as a fraud. Experts make things up all the time. They're qualified to.

I have a mug that actually verifies that I'm the world's best dad. That's a mug. That's not me talking. You can't just buy those.

The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work.

I'm a simple man with a simple mind. I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states.

Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers?

I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin. If that ever happens, it's only because something happened during the interview that got me going, and then I had to translate my feelings to the mouth of the character.

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on and she had a teacher she didnt 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.

If I had free time to go to Los Angeles to shoot a movie, I would rather spend it with my kids.

I'm an actor. I hate to blow everyone's illusions.

I've been accused of being unambitious, but what I do takes up every minute. I'm executive producer, I'm a writer and the host.

If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself.

Northwestern's alumni list is truly impressive. This university has graduated best-selling authors, Olympians, presidential candidates, Grammy winners, Peabody winners, Emmy winners, and that's just me!

I deliver my Truth hot and hard.

I wrote things for the school's newspaper, and - like all teenagers - I dabbled in poetry.