Adam Conover

Doing a format parody is one of my favorite things to do in comedy.

Fingerprint matching is - you know the whole thing about how no two fingerprints are alike? That's not strictly true.

You can learn more about anything, and the truth about almost anything is surprising.

I consider myself to be doing comedy in a post-Jon Stewart world to a certain extent.

I don't consider myself an educator.

I think the best comedy enlightens, informs, and changes the way people look at the world.

It's one thing to make people laugh, but after a certain point, comedy is almost cheap.

I wanted to go to grad school for philosophy, but I couldn't hack it in college, at least I couldn't at that level.

Wading River was a gorgeous place to grow up and I feel very lucky there was a wood by our house where I could go explore when I was a kid.

I sort of expose the truth about common misconceptions, or you know, investigate why we do certain things culturally, why we have certain traditions, and ask the question, 'is this really the best way we can be doing things?'

I'm the only member of my family who didn't get a PhD. So, I'm like the failure of the family, cause all I have is a bachelor's, like a drop out.

I loved 'Beakman's World' growing up. As much as I loved 'Bill Nye,' I always preferred 'Beakman's World' because I thought it was funnier.

Young people are narcissistic. They become less narcissistic as they age, but they become crankier about younger people being narcissistic.

On 'Adam Ruins Everything' we do the broadest sketch comedy possible. We do stuff where you can see it immediately and know it's a joke - characters in big silly costumes; here's Uncle Sam and he's twiddling his fingers saying, 'Oh, I'm naughty.'

One of my favorite things about sketch comedy is doing parodies and music videos.

Listen more than you speak.

I'm a liberal arts comedian and the definition of liberal arts is all spheres of human knowledge, coexisting, mixing and influencing each other.

I'm a naturally curious person.

It's only when you get towards the top that people start throwing you down a rope. It's like a law of nature, and it makes me think a lot about what my responsibility is to folks who are further down the hole where I was - how I can offer them help and how I can try to help change the structure of American society.

The brutal fact is that which foods are available in your grocery store is determined by trade wars, agriculture policy, and the outsized power wielded by large corporations.

We have a more intimate relationship with food than with almost anything else we buy, so people are with very good reason concerned about the real story behind what they eat.

I think that people are more eager to learn about food than almost every other topic.

There's no replacement for having a burning desire to talk about something: 'I know this and other people need to know!'

Late 19th-century America was basically a plutocratic enterprise while people toiled in mines and died of coal dust poisoning.

I get messages from 21-year old white dudes who have just gotten out of an expensive college and say 'Hey can I pick your brain?' and I have nothing to say to them because A. They already have all the advantages and B. My advice would be the same as anyone else: Go do open mics.

I have a vested interest in increasing the amount of diversity in my own business. That's something that I care about. So mentoring people who are trying to break into the business who could use a hand, that's the type of person I look for.

The Daily Show' was really a turning point, where people started to realize that comedy can have a true cultural impact and can have something to say that is serious.

I went to Bard College, which was a really interesting synthesis of a hippie school and a serious academic institution. It was really the perfect spot for me.

Information's right at our fingertips, but so is what you want to believe. It's the classic thing of someone Googling 'autism vaccines' - they'll find what they're looking for, depending on what they think. You'll find lots of people who are just bolstering what they already think, bolstering their cultural attitude.

Security theater is the idea of putting on a big show of security in order to make people feel safe. That's why the TSA screens everything and takes your stuff away.

I want to do stories that are about the bits of cultural furniture that are sitting there that we're like, 'Oh yeah, that's been there for years! What could possibly be weird about it?' And then we're going to lift that piece of furniture and look at all the bugs scurry away.

You can't escape culture. You can learn about it. You can criticize it. You can try to move it slowly. But at the end of the day, you can't actually opt out of the culture that you're in.

Human capacity for not thinking about what we're doing is infinite.

The truth is, people love to learn.

The direction of the country isn't controlled by one person on top making decisions. It's a mass movement of people making a lot of individual decisions that add up to something broader.

We don't claim to be infallible. I don't claim to be giving you truths from on high.

We've had erratic, weird presidents before. America's still here.

I have a very deep belief that all the problems in society are not because some people are bad and some people are good and we have to get rid of all the wrong people. Everything that we want to fix is because of a flaw in humans in general, something that humans together do incorrectly.

When something actually shocks me, that's when you know it's a great topic.

My goal as a comedian is to sway people's opinion. It's not my only goal and it's not the only way I measure myself.

I don't want to change people's opinions to my political opinion; I want to enlighten people and make them think about the world differently.

My goal is to be able to speak to everyone in the country and to be able to make everyone in the country think differently about our political system.

People are so quick to demonize and stereotype those on the other side that they often say that it's impossible to work with people on the other side.

I think that at the end of the day correcting misinformation and questioning what we think we know as a habit of mind is incredibly important.

You have to accept that other people are not going to live their lives like you, and you have to find a way to achieve your goals while they are still existing and living their lives according to their choices.

You can't solve climate change by everybody individually buying a more efficient car and throwing out less stuff. You have to make national changes through national policy.

Some people are writers and don't ever want to be on camera, some people act and not write - I like writing words for myself to say.

If it weren't for the fellow union members and leaders who have my back, the barons of the TV industry would happily pay me a nickel a page and spend what would have been my residuals on more caviar to put in their infinity pools.

No one who hired Siegfried & Roy was shocked when they brought a tiger onstage. So you shouldn't be shocked if you book a comedian and she points out that the emperor has no clothes.

Comedy has no rules, per se.