These stand up comedy quotes will inspire you. Stand-up comedy is a comedy performance and narrative craft whereby a comedian communicates to a live audience, speaking directly to them through a microphone.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging stand up comedy quotes, stand up comedy sayings, and stand up comedy proverbs.
Best Stand Up Comedy Quotes
- “I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct.” ~ Steve Martin
- “Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there’s just no shortcut – you just have to do it.” ~ John Oliver
- “I keep my stand-up comedy notes in a pile on my desk. I don’t organize my act. I keep myself in a state of confusion. It stresses me out, but I prefer creative chaos.” ~ Joy Behar
- “I just love entertaining. I will do anything – stand-up comedy, video games, fencing, internet shorts – I just want to keep being lucky enough to entertain people anyway I can. I try never to limit my art to a medium.” ~ Matthew Gray Gubler
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“I usually have sex to my stand-up comedy album. Power move.” ~ Jeff Ross
- “Stand-up comedy is tough right now. Anybody can come to a concert, tape you, and put you up on the Internet. You either fight it or embrace it.” ~ Jeff Dunham
- “When I was 14, I told my mother I was going to drop out of high school and go do stand-up comedy. All she said was ‘Oh maybe it’s better if you just die,’ because it was killing her that I was doing this.” ~ Margaret Cho
- “The beautiful thing about podcasting is it’s just talking. It can be funny, or it can be terrifying. It can be sweet. It can be obnoxious. It almost has no definitive form. In that sense it’s one of the best ways to explore an idea, and certainly much less limiting than trying to express the same idea in stand up comedy. For some ideas stand up is best, but it’s really, really nice to have podcasts as well.” ~ Joe Rogan , Stand up comedy quotes funny
- “It’s weird with stand-up comedy. It doesn’t really translate worldwide. I want to figure out how do I make it worldwide. Do a special in Africa. Can’t beat that. Pull that off, then I will have done something.” ~ Chris Rock
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“I do podcasts for the same reasons I do stand-up comedy. I love it, and I don’t care if anybody else gets it.” ~ Chris Hardwick
- “Stand-up comedy – I love this job, and I gotta tell you, folks – knock wood – it’s been working. ‘Cause I was one of those kind of people, even when I had a regular job, I couldn’t even call in sick right. You know, I was like, ‘Hello? Yeah, I can’t come in today. I have scurvy.” ~ Carol Leifer
- “An aspiring comedian must be determined to get to his or her true feelings on a subject and convey that to the audience. Figure out what you’re feeling or interested in because the goal is to get the audience interested in what you’re interested in. Good stand up comedy is drawing people into your head.” ~ Franklyn Ajaye
- “Learn as much as you can about performing. Live theater, improv classes, music, stand up comedy, dance, anything to make yourself confident and comfortable in front of an audience. It’ll all come in handy when auditioning for producers and performing with other actors. The best voice actors all have a live performance background. And are competent, fearless, incredibly creative actors.” ~ Rob Paulsen
- “I’m going to try really hard not to be bossy, but I’ve only done stand-up comedy and then my own show where you’re the total boss of everything!” ~ Rosie O’Donnell
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“I think stand-up comedy is this – it’s this kind of indulgence and narcissism.” ~ Jim Gaffigan
- “I’d been doing some light-beer commercials for Budweiser and Coors, and I was doing stand-up comedy. I wanted to get into the acting world, and my agent sent me on audition and they liked it.” ~ Kevin Nealon
- “I was doing stand up comedy when I was 11, that’s how I got started; not because I wanted to do comedy, but because we were broke, living in Echo Park in Downtown Los Angeles, from 1986, I saw the Rodney King riots; my parents didn’t really work. But I wanted a new backpack, that’s how I got into this business – I wanted a new backpack.” ~ Shia LaBeouf
- “To me, being brave is an element that is so important with stand-up comedy. It’s not essential. There are many comics who were just funny, and that’s fine, too. But that’s never been what I was trying to do in comedy. I was always trying to do something that involved not pandering to the audience.” ~ Bill Maher
- “I can’t imagine being a woman in the world of acting, like where you age starts to weigh you down – you go from being attractive to where they [directors] decided you’re out… I feel like with stand-up comedy, it doesn’t matter if I’ve gotten fatter.” ~ Jim Jefferies
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“My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that’s where I started, that’s where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.” ~ Pauly Shore
- “For me, stand-up comedy is a conversation between me and the audience. I have to keep them listening. When I’m making jokes about cake for twenty minutes, I have to make sure my audience is interested and following where I’m going.” ~ Jim Gaffigan
- “In the stand-up comedy top, there’s room for everyone – if you’re good, there’s room for everyone. You’ll put on your own show – no one casts you. You cast your own show as a stand-up comedian. When you get good at stand-up comedy you book a theater and if people show up, people show up. If people don’t show up, people don’t show up. You don’t have a director or a casting agent or anybody saying if you’re good enough – the audience will decide.” ~ Jim Jefferies
- “Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.” ~ Mark Leyner
- “People need to write articles and they need to have angles in them and I’m grateful when people are doing articles, but I always say there’s not a great mystery to stand-up comedy.” ~ Jim Gaffigan
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“I do think that stand-up comedy in general heavily favors masculinity and so I like to act a little feminine onstage.” ~ Bo Burnham
- “I personally have no interest in being a star or a celebrity. I want my stand-up comedy and how I think as a comedian to be recognized and successful.” ~ Jim Gaffigan
- “It’s exciting to be able to do something completely independent without anybody challenging it, and it’s a big part of the reason why I’m enjoying doing the stand-up comedy, is I’m able to go out and interact with people one-on-one after the show. It’s very punk-rock.” ~ Tom Green
- “Georgia was a great place to live, but I wanted to get out because I knew the opportunities for what I was doing – stand-up comedy and eventually acting – were in Los Angeles.” ~ Chris Tucker
- “The earliest stand-up comedy I was aware of was Bill Cosby. I watched Saturday Night Live as soon as I was aware of it, and Monty Python used to be on PBS at weird hours, so I used to try to watch that. And I loved George Carlin on SNL, that was the first stand-up I ever really remember seeing on TV. And then Steve Martin. I guess I was in fifth or sixth grade when Steve Martin showed up, and he was instantly my idol. And Richard Pryor around the same time too, I sort of became aware of him, though I don’t remember the first time I saw him.” ~ Louis C. K.
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“My sense of stand-up comedy would be so esoteric.” ~ Paul Rudd
- “You’re on stage and because stand-up comedy is one of the few meritocracies in the entertainment industry, there’s some kind of – at least for me, there’s some kind of idea of control.” ~ Jim Gaffigan
- “When I started stand-up – and this is in the ’90s – there was definitely people hadn’t watched decades of Comedy Central, where people are really much more educated on stand-up comedy.” ~ Jim Gaffigan
- “I was a screenwriting major in college, and really wanted to do that after I graduated, but there are no job listings for that, as we all know. I had many classmates that made it in the business, but stand-up comedy was my way in, and my first film ‘Sleepwalk with Me’ was based on those autobiographical experiences.” ~ Mike Birbiglia
- “I thought if I could do stand-up comedy well enough, I could parlay it back into films – like Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen did. They merged principles of comedy and drama together, and that’s what my first film really was, a stab at that kind of comedy.” ~ Mike Birbiglia
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“I took a job in a comedy club – not doing stand-up comedy because that’s my idea of hell, but in the office – and I went traveling.” ~ Phoebe Fox
- “I’ve been to Canada, and they love – oh my God, they love their stand-up comedy in Canada. I’ve been overseas to do shows for the troops all over the Middle East, and I actually went to China recently and did shows, not for the troops, but just for local Chinese people, and Americans that have moved there, and things like that. It was fantastic. They got it. They’re way smarter than we give them credit for.” ~ Brad Williams
- “About a year after I moved to Los Angeles, I decided I wanted to be a joke writer for a late-night talk show. So I met with a late-night joke writer and he told me that I should start by doing stand-up comedy, because that would really hone my sense of humor and joke writing ability. Eventually, I took a stand-up class and a few months later I had a seven-minute act.” ~ Anthony Jeselnik
- “I made a career goals list for 2017 and it’s so funny. I have low self-esteem or something, so I put both wishes and goals. The goals were things I’m going to do anyway, because I have no choice because my job is to do stand-up comedy so I have to tour and I have to write stuff. The wishes were all things that could be goals. As in, I bet people who have achieved these things called them goals at one point. But I haven’t looked at that piece of paper since.” ~ Jen Kirkman
- “Stand-up comedy in the end, unlike the rest of the entertainment industry, is a meritocracy. There’s a certain level of undeniability you can work toward.” ~ Jim Gaffigan
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“As a live stand-up comedy performer, I have the benefit of choosing real entrance music.” ~ John Hodgman
- “When you’re standing around for an hour doing stand up it’s no big deal but when you’re standing around watching a show for an hour – it’s a big difference. It’s annoying – your feet hurt, your back hurts – it’s just not the most comfortable way to see stand-up comedy.” ~ Joe Rogan
- “Now obviously popularity isn’t everything when it comes to stand-up comedy, but the art form itself is better today than it ever has before. I think there are more great comics. I think the standard is higher. The critical analysis is a little harsher, but that is also good. Maybe people have a higher standard than before, maybe they are a little more judgmental, a little more brutal, that makes people work harder. It makes the stand up better.” ~ Joe Rogan
- “Last night I didn’t realize I said “abortion” in my stand up comedy act instead of “circumcision.” No wonder I got blank stares at “rabbi got faint at sight of blood.”” ~ Ben Rosenfield
- “I mean, there’s an aspect I’ve always said that is – it’s, you know, it’s not poetry but it’s kind of like it. It’s not song lyrics but it’s kind of like song lyrics. It’s not rap but it’s kind of like rap. And it’s not a stand-up comedy but it is kind of like stand-up comedy. It’s all those things together.” ~ Quentin Tarantino
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“I better start doing stand-up comedy in Spanish before every comedian in Mexico translates my jokes.” ~ Felipe Esparza
- “I missed the whole thing [X-files series]. And I know it went for nine seasons, and I think I saw bits and pieces of it in maybe season seven or eight or something, and then was very busy doing whatever else, stand-up comedy and stuff throughout the world. Now I’m watching the show right from the beginning.” ~ Rhys Darby
- “I think of a lot of comedy being watched alone, for some reason. It’s surprising to me that people are getting together to watch stand-up comedy.” ~ Gary Gulman
- “I’ve seen stand-up comedy, and after a while, you start to notice that a lot of people are doing things that are like a lot of other people. There can be a bit of a herd mentality, and that’s obviously less interesting because there’s less going on. I’m just being totally frank with you.” ~ Dylan Moran
- “Stand-up comedy is this thing you get to do, so you have to treat it with respect. You can’t just be like, ‘Alright, I got my hour down, people are coming to see me now. Now, I’m going to lean on the mike stand.’ No, you gotta work even harder now. You got to top what you already did. Because they’ll find someone else.” ~ Bill Burr
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“Stand-up comedy is mine: it’s my entity; it’s my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.” ~ Kevin Hart
- “You know, it wasn’t even that I’m a funny guy, I just loved stand-up comedy and I wanted to do it. It was one of the few things in my life that I knew I was going to be able to do, and I also felt as though I’d be able to do it the way I wanted to do it.” ~ Bill Burr
- “For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.” ~ Kevin Hart
- “Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting.” ~ Kevin Hart
- “There’s so much you can achieve with a launching pad like stand-up comedy. You can literally go from acting to hosting to being a personality.” ~ Kevin Hart
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“Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it.” ~ Sam Kinison
- “I’m more than a little suspicious of humor in poems because I think it can at times be a way of getting a reaction out of a reader, or an audience, that is something closer to relief: i.e., thank god this isn’t poetry, but stand-up comedy. Some poets are really funny, but more often poets are fourth-rate stand-up comics at best. But they benefit from the sheer relief of the audience.” ~ Matthew Zapruder
- “If you tell the reader it’s funny, then the audience is like an audience at a stand-up comedy club and they expect you to be funny, and if you’re not, they notice. Whereas if you read a regular op-ed about Israel or the family or medicine, you’re not starting with the assumption that you’re supposed to laugh.” ~ Dave Barry
- “I think that people who do enjoy my stand-up comedy and the people who get it and the people who are taken in by it, they see that I’m a guy that has love of the game.” ~ Dane Cook
- “I just liked stand-up comedy so much. I used to memorize Bill Cosby albums and other people’s albums, George Carlin, Flip Wilson.” ~ Drew Carey
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“Stand-up comedy and poverty. Those were my two main endeavors.” ~ Dave Foley
- “New York State is giant and has some of the most beautiful landscape on the Eastern seaboard. There is so much history in New York State, from the Erie Canal to the Catskills, the birth of American stand-up comedy.” ~ Adam Savage
- “When it comes to English stand-up comedy, Indians have only seen the best – Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and the like. So, when someone claims to be an English stand-up comedian in India, he’d better be very good if he’s going to make a life of it.” ~ Vir Das
- “I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don’t get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it’s here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me.” ~ Vir Das
- “Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.” ~ Dwayne Johnson
- “But sometimes it’s good to dare yourself to do the unthinkable. And rather than stand in front of an audience with no clothes on, I decided to have a go at stand-up comedy.” ~ Evan Davis
