Trevor Noah is a South African comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He is the host of The Daily Show, an American satirical news program on Comedy Central. Profoundly inspirational Trevor Noah quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
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Famous Trevor Noah Quotes
I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother’s a black woman, South African Xhosa woman and my father’s Swiss, from Switzerland. Trevor Noah
For my mother. My first fan. Thank you for making me a man. Trevor Noah
The older you get, the more you start to realize that you can’t win an argument in a relationship. You can’t win a fight with your woman. Because if you lose, you lose. And if you win, you lose. Trevor Noah
In any society built on institutionalized racism, race mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent. Trevor Noah
Most of my show is true; like, 90% of everything I say on stage is true. I just have to find the way to make it funny that’s the difficult thing. Trevor Noah
If you stop to consider the ramifications, you’ll never do anything. Trevor Noah
We live in the Internet age. Everyone wants clicks. Clicks are what sells. Trevor Noah
I was wanted. Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being. Trevor Noah
There’s more outrage on Twitter about a One Direction split or about what one band member said to another than there is about institutionalized racism and something huge. Trevor Noah
He liked to be liked by the world, which made his abuse even harder to deal with. Because if you think someone is a monster and the whole world says he’s a saint, you begin to think that you’re the bad person. Trevor Noah
Nobody owns comedy. Nobody owns a premise. Nobody owns an idea. Trevor Noah
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. Trevor Noah
Comedy is really getting quite popular in South Africa. Trevor Noah
We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others because we don’t live with them. Trevor Noah
You have two choices, two paths to take as a comedian. You can tackle the difficult subjects and be harsh about it, be brash, be abrasive. But adding hatred to racism is not going to help everybody. So I like to have fun around it. Trevor Noah
In America, the dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto. Trevor Noah
I live in a country where I’d say nine out of ten people know me when I walk through the streets. There’s people taking pictures, there’s tabloids trying to make up stories. I’m used to that. The same thing when I’m in Australia or the U.K. I get stopped. Trevor Noah
Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked. Trevor Noah
What I’ve always said about comedy is if you do it in the right way, you can say anything to anybody because they know where you’re coming from. They know it’s not malicious. Trevor Noah
A kid cannot dream of being an astronaut if he does not know about space. Trevor Noah
I’m not an abrasive person. I do speak my mind, but my goal is never to offend. I don’t intentionally want to strike a chord. Trevor Noah
Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new world for them. My mother did that for me, and with the progress I made and the things I learned, I came back and created a new world and a new understanding for her. Trevor Noah
America was a thing I saw on TV that wasn’t a real world. That wasn’t within my realm of dreaming. Trevor Noah
You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad. Where you either hate them or love them. But that’s not how people are. Trevor Noah
Maybe it’s because I come from a very utopian world of being a comedian, but I’m used to many live comedy performances going on in any city I’m in, and each of us is trying to be the best at what we do. I don’t think of it as a competition so much as a thriving comedy economy. Trevor Noah
We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. Trevor Noah
When you are honest in your comedy, you have to acknowledge the world that you’re in. Through a comedic voice, you’re talking about what needs to be talked about, whether it’s race relations or politics or anything that’s happening on a global or an American scale. Trevor Noah
Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people. Trevor Noah
If you laugh with somebody, then you know you share something. Trevor Noah
People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive. Trevor Noah
I lost contact with my father for many years because of apartheid. For, like, six years, I didn’t see my dad. And, now, this was the six years of being a teenager. Trevor Noah
Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says we’re the same. A language barrier says we’re different. Trevor Noah
My mom used to get arrested for being with my dad. She would get fined. She would spend weekends in jail. Trevor Noah
Comfort can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor but also a ceiling. Trevor Noah
Africa’s not a color it’s a place. Trevor Noah
Progression, in my opinion, is often identifying shortcomings whether it’s views or the things you’re doing in your life, your relationships and trying to find the places where you improve on those. Trevor Noah
My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage, and straight onto the stage. Two minutes, and I am on the stage. That way, in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends. Trevor Noah
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. Trevor Noah
The first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren’t laughing, it’s not comedy. It’s as simple as that. Trevor Noah
I always believe that funny is serious and serious is funny. You don’t really need a distinction between them. Trevor Noah
I like the anonymity, the fact that you’re a stranger making strangers laugh. You aren’t forcing them to laugh it’s involuntary, and that’s when they give the most honest response. Trevor Noah
If you laugh with somebody, then you know you share something. Trevor Noah
If I’m doing something on stage, and it evokes an emotion, then I might show that emotion, but I also don’t believe in being a preacher. If you have a point, that’s a bonus. But the funny has to come first; otherwise, you shouldn’t call yourself a comedian. Trevor Noah
I like the anonymity, the fact that you’re a stranger making strangers laugh. You aren’t forcing them to laugh it’s involuntary, and that’s when they give the most honest response. Trevor Noah
I want my audience to be my friends that is when they will get the best comedy. If they see me as a performer, they won’t get the best show. Trevor Noah
A dog is a great thing for a kid to have. It’s like a bicycle but with emotions. Trevor Noah
I was doing a show at the Comedy Store which Eddie Izzard saw, and we chatted for a bit afterwards. I didn’t really know he was; we just hung out as comedians together, and when he heard my story, he said, Why don’t you tell that on stage? I didn’t really want to burden people with all that, but he said that I could have fun with it. Trevor Noah
Relationships are built in the silences. You spend time with people, you observe them and interact with them, and you come to know them and that is what apartheid stole from us time.Trevor Noah
We’ve got so many different cultural groups in my family that I’ve had to learn to accommodate them in different ways. My father speaks different to my mum. My mum speaks different to my grandmother. Everybody speaks different, so you find you start tweaking your language to be more accessible to people. Trevor Noah
Comedy is a great tool. We are trying to find ways to use humor to enlighten people without preaching to them. Trevor Noah
I don’t know how to let loose when I’m dancing to the music and the people that made the music are watching me. I’ve never felt so much pressure in my life. Trevor Noah
Often, people who can do, don’t because they’re afraid of what people that can’t do will say about them doing. Trevor Noah
If you look at it, the history of comedy has always been strongest among the nations who have been persecuted the most. Trevor Noah
The way I feel onstage is generally the way the audience is going to feel, because I’m imbuing them with that energy. I want you to feel like I feel, so I need to be in the most comfortable space, where I feel the most intimate with this lens. Trevor Noah
As a comedian, I’m forced to have a tough skin. Until people laugh, they are detractors. You walk into a new audience where nobody knows you, they go Make us laugh. Show us what you’re made of. Prove why we should be listening to you. Trevor Noah
A knowledgeable man is a free man, or at least a man who longs for freedom. Trevor Noah
I’ve never been afraid to fall in love, nor impatient to find it. Trevor Noah
I saw, more than anything, that relationships are not sustained by violence but by love. Trevor Noah
I was the first in my family to board an airplane. I was the first in my family to get kicked off an airplane. Trevor Noah
So many black families spend all of their time trying to fix the problems of the past. That is the curse of being black and poor, and it is a curse that follows you from generation to generation. My mother calls it the black tax. Trevor Noah
We get angry about the small things sometimes, I feel, so that we feel like we’re doing something, so that we don’t have to tackle the big things. And it’s fine; let people do that. But I’m not gonna now change because of that. You know? Like, the worst thing that happens to me is you don’t like me. And then what? Trevor Noah
I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother’s a black woman, South African Xhosa woman and my father’s Swiss, from Switzerland. Trevor Noah
I’m a quarterback. I don’t need to score the touchdown. I just need to spot the pass. Trevor Noah
I think sometimes it’s nice to have perspective on these issues, just so that you understand that it’s not a unique problem that one country deals with, but rather an idea that society as a whole deals with across borders. Trevor Noah
I don’t think I have thick skin, but I heal fast. It’s easy to break through, but I heal fast. Trevor Noah
As the outsider, you can retreat into a shell, be anonymous, be invisible. Or you can go the other way. You protect yourself by opening up. Trevor Noah
I always believe that funny is serious and serious is funny. You don’t really need a distinction between them. Trevor Noah
All nonwhites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given differing levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at odds. Trevor Noah
The truth is, people don’t know me. When people don’t know you, they’re going to try to get to know you as quickly as possible, because you’re now taking the place of somebody that they love dearly, or somebody that they hate sincerely, and so they need to know who you are. Trevor Noah
You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all. Trevor Noah
My mom, through my dad, rented the apartment next door to his he had the lease on both places. But then, she would dress up and act like his maid a practical maid. No fantasies. Trevor Noah
Try being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culture while still living in the white community. You will face more hate and ridicule and ostracism than you can even begin to fathom. Trevor Noah
I’ve always been a fan of issues around race and racialism, and I’ve loved playing with it. People act as though it isn’t an issue, but it’s a recurring theme in our lives globally. Trevor Noah
Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. Trevor Noah
I’ve always been a fan of issues around race and racialism, and I’ve loved playing with it. People act as though it isn’t an issue, but it’s a recurring theme in our lives globally. Trevor Noah
Apartheid kept me away from my father because he was white, but for almost all the kids I knew on my grandmother’s block in Soweto, apartheid had taken away their fathers as well, just for different reasons. Trevor Noah
I’m literally driving in the middle of the night, and my phone rings, and my manager says, How would you like to be the host of the Daily Show? I get out the car, and I didn’t have legs. You know in those movies where there’s an explosion? But instead of the sound of the explosion, you hear the silence. That’s literally what happened. Trevor Noah
