The Daily Show quotes

What is the responsibility of the people who cover Wall Street? Who are you responsible to? The people with the 401Ks and the pensions and the general public or the Wall Street traders—and by the way, this casts aspersion on all of Wall Street when that's unfair, as well! The majority of those guys are good guys. They're working their asses off, they're really bright guys. I know a lot of 'em, they're just trying to do the right thing and they're gettin' fucked in this thing, too!

I'm under the assumption, and maybe this is purely ridiculous, but I'm under the assumption that you don't just take their word at face value. That you actually then go around and try to figure it out. So, I again—you now become the face of this and that is incredibly unfortunate. Because you are not the face of it, you shouldn't be the face of it. You are the person that was I-don't-know-what enough to stand up and go, "Hey, that's wasn't fair!" Which, it's not because this show isn't fair. And you can tell Doucheborough that it's not supposed to be fair. [...] That's not our job.

Cramer: It didn't work.

Stewart: [nods] So maybe we could remove the "financial expert" and In Cramer We Trust and get back to the fundamentals in reporting, as well, and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces.

Cramer: I think we make that deal right here. [Stewart and Cramer shake hands.]

That was our show! [...] I hope that was as uncomfortable to watch as it was to do.

Larry Kilgore: "Tyrant" means to me somebody like Hitler or Lincoln who comes in and murders the people for their own political gain.

Jessica: You think Lincoln's a tyrant?

Larry: Yes, ma'am.

Jessica: That's not something you normally hear.

Larry: No it is not, but Lincoln and Hitler are very similar, but most Americans aren't aware of it.

Jessica: I'm sorry, I'm confused.

Larry: Hitler was the one that killed six million Jews. Lincoln was the one that killed six hundred thousand Americans.

Jessica: Was Lincoln the one that gave a lot of liberties to people as well?

Larry: [long pause] Not that I know of.

Jessica: "[who is African American]" No liberties that you can think of?

Larry: No, ma'am.

So now, instead of being spied on by the Executive Branch, it turns out we're being spied on by all the branches. I think— I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying that you broke any laws. We're just saying, it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to.

You shouldn't have talking points about a person before that person can talk!

So what I'm getting from Fox is this: Exploiting government largess, while reprehensive and morally corrupting for an individual, is A-OK for corporations. So, maybe this'll help: Don't think about food stamps, and Head Start, and programs like that as feeding and helping a small child. Think about it as investing in a promising start-up with a liquidity problem.

I think we drum good people out of politics who are defined by the single worst thing they've ever done, as opposed to the context of their public lives, and I think we make it much, much easier for people who have no business holding office to enter the process, because when you're not talking about ideas and world views and agendas, when you're talking about character and personality, it makes it very easy for someone to float through the process without ever having to explain themselves or demonstrate what they know.

If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more fucking time. But I would really settle for less fucking tragedy.

Maybe a more nuanced alert system could allow for more productive intervention beyond “You have ten seconds to disperse”. Or we can agree to keep ignoring the roots of how systemically, historically disenfranchised many African American communities still are, only paying attention to them when we fear their periodic, fiery ball of anger threatens to enter our airspace, and once again breathing a blissful sigh of forgetful relief when it’s another near miss.

What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us and us killing ourselves. If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our… We invaded two countries, and spent trillions of dollars and thousand of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over, like, five or six different countries, all to keep Americans safe. We got to do whatever we can, we’ll torture people. We got to do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. Nine people, shot in a church, what about that? “Hey what are you gonna do? Crazy is crazy, right?” That’s the part that I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around.

I heard someone on the news say, well, "tragedy has visited this church”. This wasn’t a tornado. This was a racist. This was a guy with a Rhodesia badge on his sweater. You know, I hate to even use this pun, but this one is black and white. There’s no nuance here. And we’re gonna keep pretending like “I don’t get it, what happened, there’s one guy who lost his mind”, but we are steeped in that culture in this country and we refuse to recognize it.

The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina, and the roads are named for Confederate generals, and the white guy is the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him. We’re bringing it on ourselves. And that’s the thing, Al-Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS, they’re not shit compared to the damage that we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis.

The stakes of this election don't make Donald Trump's opponent less subject to less scrutiny; it actually makes him more subject to scrutiny. If the barbarians are at the gate, you want Conan standing on the ramparts, not chocolate chip cookie guy.