A list created by: Lee Sonogan
The English stand-up comedian Ricky Gervais has been around and has done it all. He is also an actor, director, writer and a singer known for his black, cringe, observation, insult and many more forms of comedy. Like many things, at first, I was not the biggest fan of the guy until I found The Ricky Gervais Show starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington which was later adapted into a podcast and an animated television series.
- “Everything I do is somehow rooted in humanity. It’s always about people; it’s always about ego. It’s always about desperation. It’s quite existential. You know, ‘Am I leading a good life?’ That might be because I’m an atheist, and I think this is all we’ve got, so you better be nice. And have fun.” – Ricky Gervais
- “I was very protective of my privacy. I didn’t want people to write bad things about me that weren’t true, because that’s just not fair. Fifty percent of everything written about me is wrong.” – Ricky Gervais
- “I think it’s important to hold a mirror up to society and yourself.” – Ricky Gervais
- “Sometimes being old is used as an insult, which is bizarre because, if you’re lucky, that’s literally going to happen to you. It’s a strange thing to gloat about: being born recently.” – Ricky Gervais
- “I think being nice is more important than being clever.” – Ricky Gervais
- “You should make something. You should bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world before. It doesn’t matter what it is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a table or a film or gardening-everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, ‘I did that.'” – Ricky Gervais
- “I’m a scientist at heart, so I know how important the truth is. However inconvenient, however unattractive, however embarrassing, however shocking, the truth is the truth, and wanting it not to be true doesn’t change things.” – Ricky Gervais
- “People confuse the subject of the joke with the target of the joke, and they’re very rarely the same.” – Ricky Gervais
- “Making people laugh is easy for me. I’m quite proud of that. But I’m prouder of silencing an audience for a minute because they’re thinking about something.” – Ricky Gervais
- “When I was about to be famous, I feared it on a few levels. I feared it because I didn’t want people to lump me in with those people who’d do anything to be famous. I didn’t like the word ‘celebrity.’ I feared intrusion, you know? Make me famous, and suddenly you can go through my trash bins.” – Ricky Gervais
- “Free speech is one of the most important things to me, but I think it gets confusing when it comes to offense. Because for one, just because you have the right to say anything, it doesn’t mean you have to.” – Ricky Gervais
- “When I see a headline ‘Guess who’s going out with who?’ I don’t guess, and I don’t click.” – Ricky Gervais
- “I’ve got re-addicted to normal people, which is the loveliest thing to write about.” – Ricky Gervais
- “Science is constantly proved all the time. If we take something like any fiction, any holy book, and destroyed it, in a thousand years’ time, that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back because all the same tests would be the same result.” – Ricky Gervais
- “The best script in the world doesn’t work perfectly when you actually act it out.” – Ricky Gervais
- That’s a law. That’s a given. So you have to play with everything. And the more fun you have with it, the better the finished product.” – Ricky Gervais
- “Ego is hilarious – especially the vanity of a comedian. As soon as you see one start worrying about how cool he is or about how many stadiums he can fill, he stops being funny.” – Ricky Gervais
- “I think comedies should be short. I don’t want to be self-indulgent; I don’t want a two-hour comedy.” – Ricky Gervais
- “If you spend your days doing what you love, it is impossible to fail. So I go about my days trying to bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world before. And then everyone gets furious about it. And then I sit back and say, ‘I did that!'” – Ricky Gervais
- “I don’t believe in ghosts or ESP or elves… or God. But I am spiritual in the sense that I get a lump in my throat when I listen to Vaughan Williams.” – Ricky Gervais
I have been meaning to quote Ricky Gervais more often and review his animated show as I have seen all of it. It’s weird because not all English comedy styles interest me and they should, for example, I am not the biggest fan of Jimmy Carr. Maybe there are more quality things of Ricky Gervais I have seen myself compared to Jimmy Carr.