Trevor Noah Quotes

Trevor Noah is a South African comedian, political commentator, and television host. He is the host of The Daily Show, a satirical news program on Comedy Central.

Trevor Noah is known for his comedy, but he also has some insightful things to say about the world. Check out some of his best quotes!

Trevor Noah Quotes

“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

“Maybe we need to change who gets the Nobel Peace Prize, and when. Because so many people have won the prize and they’ve benefitted from all of its prestige, and then they’ve gone on to not be peaceful. Like, maybe we should only give the Nobel Peace Prize to people after their career is over and they’ve passed away, right? It’s at the end. We can call it the ‘Rest in Peace Prize.’ Then we know you’re not gonna surprise us, you’re not gonna hurt anyone. Unless someone trips on your grave.”— Trevor Noah

“Ben Carson: for people who like Donald Trump’s ideas but hate his charm and charisma. Ben Carson is like the drug free cocaine for people who don’t wanna get high but just like snorting white powder.”— Trevor Noah

“Donald Trump didn’t invent racism. Trump didn’t invent Islamophobia. And he didn’t invent violence. All he did was put his name on them like he does with everything else.”— Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah Quotes About Relationships

“Nelson Mandela once said, ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.’ He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else’s language, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, ‘I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being.”— 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

“Hey, son, what the hell is with your haircut? Did you see a paintbrush and say ‘I want that dude’s look!’?”— Trevor Noah

“I live in I live in South Africa. I’m proud to live there. I’ve always said I want to be a comedian from South Africa in the world. I will stay in places for a bit here and there and pop into New York for a while, maybe stay in London for a year, but my home will always be South Africa. I enjoy it too much. There’s so much craziness going on—fantastic restaurants, great lifestyle—it’s fun.”— Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah Quotes About Love

“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

“If you look at it, the history of comedy has always been strongest among the nations who have been persecuted the most.”— Trevor Noah

“Nearly one million people lived in Soweto. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them were black—and then there was me. I was famous in my neighborhood just because of the color of my skin. I was so unique people would give directions using me as a landmark. ‘The house on Makhalima Street. At the corner you’ll see a light-skinned boy. Take a right there.’— Trevor Noah

“A dog is a great thing for a kid to have. It’s like a bicycle but with emotions.”— Trevor Noah

“Race jokes are kind of like orcas: powerful and entertaining, but you put them on display in the wrong environment and people are going to get hurt, and the joke might die. Like this one just did.”— Trevor Noah

Funny Trevor Noah Quotes

“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. Race mixing proves that races can mix, and in a lot of cases want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.”— Trevor Noah

“The first thing I learned about having money was that it gives you choices. People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have. That is the freedom of money.”— Trevor Noah

“He really is a TV president….He loves the performance of doing things. But a lot of the time, nothing’s actually being done. Essentially, Donald Trump wants to be president, but he doesn’t want to do president.”— Trevor Noah

“But the real world doesn’t go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt. And just because it’s not happening to you, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And at some point you have to choose; black or white, pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, oh I don’t take sides, but at some point, life will force you to pick a side.”— Trevor Noah

Best Trevor Noah Quotes

“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

“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”— Trevor Noah

“The hood made me realise that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programmes and part-time jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn’t discriminate.”— Trevor Noah

“The credits from the second Godfather are better than Godfather III.”— Trevor Noah

“The convention is like where someone has put down a lure, and now there’s just going to be Pokémon delegates popping up everywhere. We’re here trying to catch them all”— Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah Quotes With Page Numbers

“Africa’s not a color—it’s a place.”— Trevor Noah

“If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.”— Trevor Noah

“We’ve had this conversation, we’ve come to the same conclusion: we can progress. It is about discomfort, yes. But that’s what progress is about, it makes you uncomfortable.”— Trevor Noah

“It seems that it’s either pro-cop and anti-black or pro-black and anti-cop, when, in reality, you can be pro-cop and pro-black, which is what we should all be. It is what we should be aiming for.”— Trevor Noah

“Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.”— Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah Quotes About Identity

“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

“ISIS without guns is just basically a blog.”— Trevor Noah

“People love to say, ‘Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.’ What they don’t say is, ‘And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.’ That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.”— Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah Book 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

“You can’t be a good comedian if you don’t have a dark side,” Trevor Noah says. “And you can’t be a good person if you don’t have a funny side.”