Humor Boundaries Quotes

For me, in my mind personally and privately, there are no limits to comedy.

I didn't think that anything is beyond humor - not profane humor, but a good, honest approach to humor.

A word to those of you out there who have yet to be offended by something I have said: Please be patient. I am working as fast as I can.

Whatever happens in life can happen on the stage, but as a comedian you should always be clear what your target is. It's fine to be gratuitously tasteless if that's what you are intending to do. It's that old line: I don't defend what a comedian might say but I defend to the death his right to say it.

Are they real fires? Or are people just reacting to something? Just because there’s an alarm going doesn’t mean it’s a fire. And I think that people are confusing the two. It’s only a fire when it offends the fans, and the fans turn on you. Tosh has fans, and they get the joke. If you’ve watched enough Tracy Morgan, you let the worst thing go by. When did Tracy Morgan become Walter Cronkite? You have to mean something to me to offend me. You can’t break up with me if we don’t date.

I have never pretended to be any kind of super-religious kind of man, but I feel very strongly that you can be funny without being dirty.

I know the fashion is that everything is fair game [for comedy material] but I don't believe that.

I try not to write jokes that are mean. I try my best to write jokes that are pretty universal and jokes that don't attack anyone. I know I often fall short of that and end up taking unfair swipes at people, but I try not to.

I think of shock as kind of an uptown form of surprise. Comedy is filled with surprise, so when I cross a line... I like to find out where the line might be and then cross it deliberately, and then make the audience happy about crossing the line with me.

Who's to say where funny stops and 'too far' starts?

At some point in the past, it was decided that women in comedy are never supposed to be shown in an unflattering light. But in comedy, you need all of your tools to be funny.

Jewish comedians do the best Jewish jokes, and anyone else doing that, they don't have a right to, because they're not coming from that experience. I know that's a slightly heightened example, but it's the same thing. We're bumpkins, so we can make bumpkin jokes.

To single out a particular group and say we can't make a joke about them is almost a form of prejudice and it's kind of patronizing.

There's things that I couldn't joke about but other people could.

Some people can do things and get away with it. Comics are famously like that. Why is it that some guys can say the most horrible things and it's not offensive, it's funny?

When you're leading Marines, you don't screw around, so the comedy is limited in uniform. And when you're a comedian, you can't be heavy handed and come across with tales of gore or material that people won't understand, so I try to keep them separate.

My humor isn't meant to be mean or hurt anyone. But it's to make them uncomfortable and laugh. I like making people feel a different range of emotions. I like to make people a bit confused.

You have to have your own internal barometer of what is too far. I try and consider feelings of people in the audience. What you have to try and do is that when there is something that could be seen as a transgression, you actually have a reason to justify the joke.

There are certain things I don't want to joke about. If it's about somebody else, it's fine. If it's about me, I think it's totally insensitive!

People wince when something is in bad taste. They laugh when it's funny. If it's too dirty or wrong, they won't laugh. But if it's a big, dirty, smart, funny laugh, they love it.

It's hard to be funny when you have to be clean.

I will make a joke about any of my family members, about me, about my wife, if I really thought that I'm doing it to be funny. If there's some darkness to it, or I think it's ill-willed or mean or not cool, then I won't do it.

There's clearly humor that goes too far and humor that is violative, and we are engaged in our humor in a complex call-and-response with one another. I'm telling you a joke to see if you think that it's funny... but if one of us violates some principle or touches on a particularly tender spot of the other, normally we adjust to that and move on.

People would say I never censor. As Billy Crystal says, 'I don't have that button.'

As I go on in standup, I keep being described as cleaner and cleaner as I do each hour, they're like, 'It's unbelievable how clean,' 'He's the cleanest person in the world.' And then I'll do shows and people will be like, 'You're supposed to be so clean, but you're talking about cancer.'