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Living with my mom, I saw how she used language to cross boundaries, handle situations, navigate the world.

Trevor Noah

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Trevor Noah
Age: 40
Born: 1984
Born: February 20
Actor
Comedian
Disc Jockey
Film Actor
Film Producer
Philanthropist
Podcaster
Presenter
Stand-Up Comedian
Television Actor
Johannesburg
Gauteng
South Africa
Saws
Situation
Navigate
Language
Situations
Living
Boundaries
Used
Cross
World
Crosses
Handle
Mom

More quotes by Trevor Noah

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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.
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[My mother] wanted to go as deep as possible into the world of religion. And that took her into Judaism.
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When you see someone as a human being, you begin to understand most people are doing what they believe is right. I ask myself, What if you were wrong? How would you want someone to engage with you?
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It was just how my parents treated me. It was the world they decided to show me. I was really sheltered. My grandmother kept me locked in the house when I was staying, you know, with the family in Soweto. And every household, for instance, had to have a registry of everyone who lived in that house.
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Donald Trump was appealing to a lot of people with his populist message.
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Comedy is crowded. There are hundreds of comedians in every place in the world.
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In America, to have news that has explicitly taken a position is a very strange place to be in, and it's a very dangerous place to be in. And that's happening on Facebook, as you saw, and that's happening online. People are just being given their news and not the news, which is really, really scary.
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Here's one redeeming quality about Donald Trump. He's an equal opportunity offender.
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I think it was something I inherited from my mother, who learned to do it. You know, I, like a baby duckling, was merely mimicking the survival traits that my mother possessed. And I came to learn very quickly that language was a powerful, powerful tool.
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A lot of black people worked with the police as snitches. We used to call them bimpees where I grew up. And, you know, they were afforded special privileges. They may have been paid by the police. But you never knew who was informing on you. We lived either next door to or - two doors away from us was a known informant in Soweto.
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I've lived many places all over the world, so I've always seen myself as a citizen of the world.
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In an American context, let's say gay rights or marriage policy - that's a progressive thing. I understand that in an American context.
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I think we need to get rid of is improving our minds and our mental health. You know, when when you suffer from depression, you go this is something that I have and I can work on it, you know? I often think of depression, though, as more of a - as more of a symptom than a cause.
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I think it's despicable. I also think it's frightening that we seem to live through history over and over again. And I don't know if I'm the only one. I feel like, when you read through history books, you always judge those people in that time.
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So what you do [under apartheid system] is you convince black people that the reason they are being oppressed is because there are some within their community who just can't behave. And if only they could behave, then everyone else would have more freedoms and liberties, which, of course, is not true.
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[I had Bar mitzvah ]it was just me and my mom. And she's celebrating. And she's reading things to me in Hebrew. I don't know what's going on. And she's telling me that now I'm a man. And I'm like, does that mean I have no chores? And she's like, no, you still have chores, but you're a man. I didn't understand most of it.
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I lived my life as a - as a part-white, part-black but then sometimes-Jewish kid.
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I don't think I, myself, am personally afraid. I do worry for the press, though, because Donald Trump has shown himself to be extremely thin-skinned. He does not take criticism well, nor does he appreciate reporting on his life.
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[ My mother] went, OK, I've read the Bible. I've read the Bible again. I'm reading the Bible again. OK, let me - where does this Bible come from? What does this Old Testament speak - who are the Israelites? Who - what is Judaism? And then she went, and I'm going to study that. And, you know, she wanted to almost get to the core.
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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.
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