Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world's mirth.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

I used to do stand-up when I was in high school. But I was also making beats for this rap group, and when we got a record deal, I sort of stopped doing the comedy and focused on the music instead. When that ended, I decided to go back to school, take broadcasting, and start my show on public-access TV.

Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn't fiction at all.

I can't watch other people doing comedy. As soon as somebody starts being funny I have to turn off because it upsets me. I get comedy indigestion. I just hate anybody else being funny. That's my job.

Creative comedy is like growing geraniums in a mine field.