The Daily Show quotes

Let me make one thing perfectly clear to you: this is not writing. I have absolutely no idea how this sentence I'm currently saying is going to finish. When and if it does, I can only hope it makes some kind of coherent ceramic pineapple.

You know, I'm sorry. Normally we have all the writers. We've got a big group of people kicking that soundbite around, but right now it's just me. So... let me see if I can, just quickly, whip something up here; erm... erm... ooh! I've got something. FUCK YOU!

These guys are the '27 Yankees of dodging questions. The '55 Dodgers of yanking Congress' chain. [...] Jon, this is once in a generation bullshit.

Nineteen people flew into the towers. It seems hard for me to imagine that we could go to war enough to make the world safe enough that nineteen people wouldn't want to do harm to us. So it seems like we have to rethink a strategy that is less military-based.

I think that's our biggest problem right there.

Guantanamo Bay isn't a prison, it's a leadership camp!

See, all of this "real America" and "fake America" can get a little hard to figure out. For instance, you may live in a small town, where they make good people, but you live in a gay state, like Massachusetts—are you real or are you fake? Or you may live in a big city, but still have a healthy mistrust of Muslims. So for those of you who are confused as to whether or not you're a real American, it's actually quite simple. Let me see if I can help you out here. [pulls out a dry-erase board and writes the following equation] Just multiply your town's population (P) by the average price of a local cup of coffee (picture of coffee cup), plus its number of art-house movie theaters (house), times the number of streets named for Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK); then divide by the number of pieces of identification you need to buy a Sudafed in your town (pill), times the number of people who wear trucker hats in your town minus the actual number of truckers (trucker hat), multiply that by 1 over the houses of worship—not counting synagogues, of course (cross)—minus the number of bars in your town. That's supposed to be a bottle. If the answer equals less than 10, congratulations, odds are very good that you're a real American.

I kinda had just read the statement that Sarah Palin had made about the Pro-America parts of the country and I think I might have said, in response to that, I think I might have said, uhh, FUCK YOU and uhh that's just my way of saying it's a profanity to say and I was answering with a profanity. But it's not really fair, and it makes it seem like I'm just addressing Governor Palin about this and I'm not. It's really this whole theme, that there is more American areas or some people love the country and some people don't. So I guess what I meant to say was Fuck all y'all!

I have great fondness and affection for John McCain, I would have voted for him, if he had made it, against Gore, quite frankly, in 2000. The guy that I see now, putting air quotes around women's health, and doing all the things that he does, I don't know what that is. And if that's a strategy that's disingenuous from how he really thinks, then my opinion of him is even lower.

If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values—they're hobbies. You know, one of the genius moves of The Founders was not writing The Bill of Rights on the back window of a dusty van.

Gitmo: Yay! Gitmo love President Obama! Gitmo finally see Promise of America! It's a new beginning for all of us! Yay! [...] You know Gitmo and all of Gitmo's friends still want to kill you—you know that, right? We want to destroy your way of life.

Jon Stewart: Yeah, we get it, Gitmo. But with these abuses we're doing that for you.

Gitmo: You're not safe. Don't you want to be safe?

Jon Stewart: Gitmo, there is no safe! No matter what we do, there is no guarantee of our safety. That is the price of a free society. So—finally—we're going to do what's right.

Gitmo: I'm very scary.

Jon Stewart: Gitmo, this has nothing to do with you! You can't define us. It's about not letting fear do that. [...] We can safeguard ourselves well using smart and legal tactics.

It's nice to see that even in retirement Dick Cheney is still making the time to scare the shit out of people. So many people retire and just stop doing the thing they love. But not him. Yes, apparently less than two weeks after riding off into the sunset—which he has to do, because he's allergic to sun—Dick Cheney wanted to make clear that if anything happens now, it's the new guy's fault. [...]

Ooh, I have a question. What if we're hit again by a guy who's really sad because his whole family was killed in Iraq—who's responsible for that? Or what if someone got pissed off at us because his brother was potato sacked and bound and kept in a cage without a lawyer for seven years on an island in the Caribbean—who's responsible for that? Or! If Al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border had time to reconstitute and devise another attack because we pulled all our resources into invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11—who's responsible for that? I'm gonna go with, hold on... who's responsible for that? I'm gonna have to go with... Obama.

Y'know, over the years we have tried very hard to make Dick Cheney look evil, but in kind of a cute way. Y'know, kinda funny, cartoonish, lot of Darth Vader jokes, funny pictures, man-sized safe, then we did that funny wheelchair mock-up. It was all really funny and we called the segment You Don't Know Dick; it was kinda light-hearted and all that, but you know what? Fuck it. He no longer deserves any satirical protection, any glib patina of sugar-coating. We are now officially changing the name of his segment. [New animated titles for Why Are You Such a Dick? play.]

People always talk to me about, "Who are your influences? What makes you do what you do?" I can say, I draw a line—I do what I do because of Bruce Springsteen, and I'll tell you why: You introduced me to the concept of The Other Side. You introduced me to the concept of: you go through the tunnel and you take a chance, and you can work to get away from your circumstance. And by working to get away from your circumstance you can make something better of yourself, but there's no guarantee. [...] But you know what? The joy of it is chasing that dream, and that was my inspiration for leaving New Jersey and goin' to New York. And bless you, my friend. You're the Man. So I just wanted to thank you personally from the bottom of my heart for giving me something to put into the dashboard as I drove a U-Haul van through the Holland Tunnel.

IOWA?! Iowa says banning gay marriage is unconstitutional? This was last year's Iowa Gay Pride parade. [Shows clip from "The Straight Story", with Alvin Straight riding a lawn mower on a country road] They are the aortic valve of the heartland of America. They are now officially more progressive than California.

Sean Hannity (clip): Absolutely. Against tyranny.

Jon Stewart: Yes, "tyranny". A/k/a our democratically elected President. You know what guys, meet me at camera 3 for a second — I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing. And I feel for you because ah... I've been there. A few times. In fact, one of them was a bit of a nailbiter. But see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he's probably going to do things you disagree with. He could cut taxes on the wealthy, remove government's oversight capability, invade a country that you thought should not be invaded, but that's not tyranny. That's democracy. See, now you're in the minority. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco. And by the way, if I remember correctly when disagreement was expressed about that president's actions when y'all were in power I believe the response was "why do you hate America?", "watch what you say", "love it or leave it", "suck on my truck nuts".