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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
Handle
Mom
Saws
Situation
Navigate
Language
Situations
Living
Boundaries
Used
Cross
World
Crosses
More quotes by Trevor Noah
Comedy is crowded. There are hundreds of comedians in every place in the world.
Trevor Noah
Families were living separately from the fathers. And so although, according to African culture, men were the head of the household, the truth is women were the ones who were raising everybody, including men. And growing up with my mother, that was something I really learned to appreciate.
Trevor Noah
If you can't trust your president to get the right information on a Googleable fact, then can you really trust him with the harder stuff? Which, by the way, is everything else the president of the United States has to deal with.
Trevor Noah
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.
Trevor Noah
Traveling the world I've learned that progressives, regardless of their locations, think in a global space.
Trevor Noah
Those were the places where many people mixed if they wanted to mix, which was against the law [Immorality Act of 1927]. My mother was part of that group. My father was part of that group. People who were black and whites and Indian and Asian - and you came together and said, we choose to mix at the risk of being arrested. And so they did.
Trevor Noah
Even now in America, you know, when people say they hate immigrants, they're not referring to a Canadian immigrant. You know, they're not referring to somebody who has an accent who's slightly different to theirs.
Trevor Noah
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.
Trevor Noah
I do feel like I have a sense of the times. A lot of the things America is experiencing now, I feel like I have lived through. I think there is a cause for concern.
Trevor Noah
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.
Trevor Noah
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.
Trevor Noah
If I could get an honest answer, I would ask Trump. How much money would you want in order to leave the presidency? Because I think he would have a number, strangely enough. Then we'd know how much to launch the Kickstarter for.
Trevor Noah
[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.
Trevor Noah
I know that I cannot change the entire world, but I've always believed I can at least affect change in my world.
Trevor Noah
People should always be wary of that because the precedent is set. And it's so much easier to build on a foundation than it is something that doesn't exist. So you see it as something that's happening to people that are not you. And then it expands, and it expands further. And then, one day, you're on a registry.
Trevor Noah
I always say to people, you know - someone goes, oh, well, what are you going to do about terrorist attacks and Muslims? We got to do something. And I go, don't let those in power trick you out of your freedoms by using your fear.
Trevor Noah
I guess that is the strange part of the human brain that people have studied for eons - is hatred and self-hatred. You can convince people that the problem is not coming from the top but is, rather, being created by the people who are being oppressed.
Trevor Noah
It's the reason the United States fell into the Patriot Act - because they were reacting.
Trevor Noah
When I wrote the book, I thought that I was the hero of my story. And in writing it, I came to realize over time that my mom was the hero. And I was, you know - I was just her punk-ass sidekick.
Trevor Noah
America is dealing with the effects of an underreaction to Donald Trump when he was running and when he was Mr. Saying-Racist-Things-on-the-News.
Trevor Noah