John Oliver

So it’s an aging product that’s decreasing in popularity and yet somehow it just can’t stop making money. It’s basically the agricultural equivalent of U2.

There is nothing inherently wrong with media that has a viewpoint. This show has a viewpoint; we fact-check everything we say, but I don’t pretend to be neutral on things like criminal justice reform; I’m for it. Uh… Coldplay; I’m against it. Uh… or DeWalt ladders; they’re a seamless blend of style and performance. Walking up one is like ascending to Heaven on a golden cloud. I’m not being paid to say that. I’m just a fan.

In the last series, we set up a church [to expose televangelists and the ease of avoiding tax through establishing a religious organisation]. It took a lot of legal advice and months of gathering correspondence with one pastor. In terms of the UK, I’m not sure what the Inland Revenue’s position on churches is. The IRS is very much of the opinion that all churches, whatever their form, operate tax free. How would I make sense of what we achieved? We achieved nothing! We achieved $70,000 in single [donations], a four-foot wooden penis and five vials of human sperm. Although a lot of people would consider that a decent year’s work, I suppose. It’s a pretty impressive room full of tat.

Calling Jeremy Corbyn the ‘British Bernie Sanders’ would be very reductive, very simplistic and probably the best way to explain him to Americans, while being wildly inaccurate. As for Corbyn and Sanders, I think we’ll have to wait and see whether being principled actually gets you anywhere. I don’t think you can doubt the tenacity of their beliefs. But can you translate that into power?

Sarah Palin has been hired back by Fox News, and she only left five months ago. She has now effectively quit quitting. She can’t even commit to being uncommitted.

But it’s been 114 years. It’s like for over a century, America’s computer’s been saying, An update to your country is available and we’ve been clicking Remind me later again and again and again.

I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it. I have the biting comment formed somewhere in the back of my head – like it’s in captivity. Sometimes people expect that I’m going to be tough. It’s not a bad situation. People treat you better. People are on time.

[on The Who’s performance at Woodstock] It was the worst gig we ever played.

Because sex is like boxing, if one of the parties didn’t agree to participate, the other one is committing a crime.

My little cousin tells me I look like Magneto so I guess that’s who I should probably play.

Cocaine is God’s way of saying that you’re making too much money.

I’ve discovered as I’ve grown up that life is far more complicated than you think it is when you’re a kid. It isn’t just a straightforward fairytale.

When I’m alone, I can sleep crossways in bed without an argument.

This is what happens when you release a great body of work after they spent millions to ruin you.

There are so many people who are trying to make it in the music business. It’s a very open business, more open I think than any other area of show business.

I started working on trying to sound like June from the very beginning.

[on Anthony Weiner] I remember him now… the man whose name is so perfect for the scandal he was caught up in that it rekindled my faith in God.

I was making guitars and I was a sheet metal worker and if you ever see sheet metal workers’ hands, you’ve never seen so many cuts in your life.

President Bush gave a rousing speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Afterward, in a touching show of support, every foreign dignitary shook hands with the president and smiled warmly as he mispronounced their names.

I don’t know how I feel right now.

I want to play tennis and fornicate.