Best 148 quotes of Trevor Noah on MyQuotes

A lot of black people worked with the police as snitches. We used to call them bimpees where I grew up. And, you know, they were afforded special privileges. They may have been paid by the police. But you never knew who was informing on you. We lived either next door to or - two doors away from us was a known informant in Soweto.

America is the one place in the world where I just innately understood [that] South Africa and the United States of America have a very similar history. It's different timelines, but the directions we've taken and the consequences - dealing with the aftermath of what we consider to be democracy, and realizing that freedom is just the beginning of the conversation, that's something I've learned.

As an outsider myself, I always mixed myself with different groups...I've never been afraid to go into a different space and relate to those people, because I don't have a place where I belong and that means I belong everywhere.

At the same time, you had Barack Obama as a president. You had Hillary Clinton on track, all the Democrats looking good. And, you know, Donald Trump was just an entertaining buffoon to watch. And, over time, you came to realize that Donald Trump was appealing to a lot of people with his populist message. And, slowly, I think, even as a show, we started shifting in tone as the election started shifting.

Comedy is a great tool. We [comics] are trying to find ways to use humor to enlighten people without preaching to them.

Comedy is crowded. There are hundreds of comedians in every place in the world.

[Donald] Trump ditched his press pool. That's just stupid and funny. Get over it. You know, [Bill] Clinton ditched his press pool. This is something presidents do sometimes. Don't make everything that Trump does a scandal because what'll happen is you'll diminish the real scandals, you know? You've got to get over the fact that you hate the person and rather focus on what you're trying to do.

Donald Trump does not take criticism well, nor does he appreciate reporting on his life.

Donald Trump was appealing to a lot of people with his populist message.

Donald Trump was just an entertaining buffoon to watch.

Even now in America, you know, when people say they hate immigrants, they're not referring to a Canadian immigrant. You know, they're not referring to somebody who has an accent who's slightly different to theirs.

Families were living separately from the fathers. And so although, according to African culture, men were the head of the household, the truth is women were the ones who were raising everybody, including men. And growing up with my mother, that was something I really learned to appreciate.

Here's one redeeming quality about Donald Trump. He's an equal opportunity offender.

I actually think this whole Brexit thing in the U.K. was a welcome example of being straightforward. With the candidates pulling out quickly, there's no stringing the people along.

I always say to people, you know - someone goes, oh, well, what are you going to do about terrorist attacks and Muslims? We got to do something. And I go, don't let those in power trick you out of your freedoms by using your fear.

I became a chameleon. My color didn't change. But I could change your perception of my color.

I came to realize,people who had Chinese accents will continue to have Chinese accents in America are treated as being stupid or not as intelligent as an English speaker who is fluent with an American accent - I came to realize why. But it's always fascinated me how quickly you can change where you stand with another human being just based on how you speak.

I'd get suspicious looks from people just walking down the streets. Where are you from? They'd ask. I'd reply in whatever language they'd addressed me in using the same accent that they used. There would be a brief moment of confusion, and then the suspicious look would disappear.

I don't think I, myself, am personally afraid. I do worry for the press, though, because Donald Trump has shown himself to be extremely thin-skinned. He does not take criticism well, nor does he appreciate reporting on his life.

I don't think things are getting more insane. I do know that the country is more divided than it's ever been. Tensions in America are at their peak.

I existed in a space where my mother was a black woman and my father was a white man. And that's how I saw the world. I was just like, some dads are whites and some moms are black. And that's how it is.

If he says that, if he wins, he's going to, you know, dismantle the libel laws and come after the newspapers, I feel like we should take him at his word. This is the same man who has been writing letters to people who he's, you know, bared a grudge against for 20 years. So if Donald Trump says that, I don't know why you wouldn't want to believe him.

If the police believed that they were planning any form of resistance against the state, then you were just gone. Nobody knew where you were, and you just hoped to see that family member again.

If you can't trust your president to get the right information on a Googleable fact, then can you really trust him with the harder stuff? Which, by the way, is everything else the president of the United States has to deal with.

If you look at this election, I feel like Donald Trump was speaking a different language to Hillary Clinton.

If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.

I go - I trace depression back to things. So I go, ok, I look back and I say my self-esteem was affected because of my skin and because my family had no money and I was ashamed of how poor I was. And I look at all of that and I was trying to hide myself. And so I felt like I was less than I was. And so that then leads to you being depressed. And I work on these things.

I grew up in a world where authority was female. I never thought to call myself a feminist because of branding. I had this skewed idea of feminist: I thought it meant being a woman who hates men. When I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists, I was like, "Oh, this is what my mom taught me. This is simple. I don't understand why everybody is not this.

I guess that is the strange part of the human brain that people have studied for eons - is hatred and self-hatred. You can convince people that the problem is not coming from the top but is, rather, being created by the people who are being oppressed.

[I had Bar mitzvah ]it was just me and my mom. And she's celebrating. And she's reading things to me in Hebrew. I don't know what's going on. And she's telling me that now I'm a man. And I'm like, does that mean I have no chores? And she's like, no, you still have chores, but you're a man. I didn't understand most of it.

I had some people who disagreed with me here or there - but nothing as strong as I've received, you know, coming to America. That is the irony of life, so I guess - I always tell people - I go I feel like in a strange way, I'm home. You know, this doesn't shock me. This is just - I've come a long way to be in a place that is extremely familiar to me.

I hate using this term [miracle]. I'm a man of science. I'm a doctor. I don't use this word. But he said, it's a miracle your mom's alive.

I hope America manages to steer itself away from partisanship and back to patriotism; we are all Americans. And as long as I can make people laugh and feel better, I'm happy.

I just had - we had instances - like, for instance, when I turned 13, she threw me a bar mitzvah. But nobody came.But nobody came because nobody knew what the hell that was. I only had black friends. No one knows what the hell you're doing.

I knew of like - I remember, for most of my life, I grew up, and "Knight Rider" was, you know - David Hasselhoff was a Dutch character in my world.

I know that I cannot change the entire world, but I've always believed I can at least affect change in my world.

I know that in South Africa, we were in that space, and we're still suffering from that space. And that was where a government very successfully convinced the majority of a population that every single person there was blocking the other people from achieving greatness in the country, only to realize that we were all being oppressed at the same time. That's one of the biggest things. And I'm proud to say that.

I learned to use language like my mother did. I would simulcast, give you the program in your own tongue.

I lived in a world where I didn't share the love for my stepfather that my mother shared for him. She married him.

I love ebola jokes. When done in the right way, maybe it gets people to learn about ebola, to learn about the stigmas behind the identities held by Africans and so on.

I'm always fascinated when people say, "We found rude conversations people had via e-mail." Why are you e-mailing this stuff? It has your signature on it! It has a time stamp!

I'm coming from a place where I have seen a different way to handle it, or a slightly different way to go through what is happening, that gives me some perspective. So I think it always helps. It always helps to have someone who has traveled the world or seen a different way to do something. That helps give you perspective.

I'm not a political progressive, but I consider myself a progressive person. What makes me a progressive, in my opinion, is the fact that I try to improve myself and by large improve the world that I'm in - in the smallest way possible.

In America, to have news that has explicitly taken a position is a very strange place to be in, and it's a very dangerous place to be in. And that's happening on Facebook, as you saw, and that's happening online. People are just being given their news and not the news, which is really, really scary.

In an American context, let's say gay rights or marriage policy - that's a progressive thing. I understand that in an American context.

In my world, a woman was the most powerful thing that I knew. Still is. A woman made the money in my house; a woman made my food. A woman beat my ass when I wasn't a good kid. Women were behind a lot of what spurred South Africa toward democracy.

I often feel like the woman in your life is your driving force. She's your muse. She plays a big role in determining how confident you feel when you walk out the door. She can add 1,000 kilowatts of energy - or drain that out of you. She said, "No, you're not that funny." I thought, She knows better than anyone.

I speak English, obviously, Afrikaans, which is a derivative of Dutch that we have in South Africa. And then I speak African languages. So I speak Zulu. I speak Xhosa. I speak Tswana. And I speak Tsonga. And like - so those are my languages of the core. And then I don't claim German, but I can have a conversation in it. So I'm trying to make that officially my seventh language. And then, hopefully, I can learn Spanish.

I still live today with my mom sending me, you know, Hebrew Scriptures or phrases or celebrating.

I think all of us should seek help, and not help is in a - you know, help shouldn't be seen as a frightening thing. Help shouldn't be seen as a weak thing.