Quotes from John Oliver

Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had.

I would hate to meet myself at 15.

I think it might honestly be time for the Sunshine State to officially change its motto to the Worst State.

It's pretty physically unsettling, living life on a visa.

Democracy is like a tamborine - not everyone can be trusted with it.

British people would die for their right to drink themselves to death.

If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring. Apple could put the entire text of "Mein Kampf" inside the iTunes user agreement, and you'd just go agree, agree, agree - what? - agree, agree.

The German language is so sonorous, isn't it? Beautiful language...the language of poetry. Angry, angry poetry.

I have occasionally - if ever I do interviews that are difficult or nerve-wracking - I take my wife's dog tags and have them in my pocket because it's a very quick way to realize that what I'm doing is not that important. It's not really worth getting stressed about because it's not, you know, war.

I realize how desperate it sounds for me, as a comedian, to ask you to laugh at my jokes.

We in Britain stopped evolving gastronomically with the advent of the pie. Everything beyond that seemed like a brave, frightening new world. We knew the French were up to something across the Channel, but we didn't want anything to do with it.

The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.