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I'm not here to affect you politically or socially. I'm here to make you laugh. I use the news as the palette for my jokes.
Stephen Colbert
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Stephen Colbert emphasizes the importance of humor over political or social influence in his work.

In this quote, Stephen Colbert expresses his primary purpose as a comedian is to bring laughter to his audience, rather than to engage them in political or social issues. He uses current events as material for his comedy, but his ultimate goal is to entertain and provide joy, highlighting the role of humor as a means of coping with or understanding the world.

Themes

HumorComedyLaughterNewsEntertainment

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a discussion about the role of comedy in society.

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My character is self-important, poorly informed, well-intentioned but an idiot. So we said, `Let's give him a promotion.'
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I may be just an empty flesh terminal reliant on technology for all my ideas, memories and relationships, but I am confident that all of that everything that makes me a unique human being is still out there somewhere, safe in a theoretical storage space owned by giant, multinational corporations.
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And that brings us to tonight's word: Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word-police, the 'wordanistas' over at Websters, are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word!' Well, anybody who knows me knows that I am no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, what did or didn't happen.
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