Trevor Noah is a South African actor, writer, and an international stand-up comedian. Noah is best known for hosting The Daily Show, an American satirical news program on Comedy Central.
Trevor was born to a black Xhosa
mother and a white Swiss-German father in an apartheid system where the couple’s
union was illegal. However, his parents managed to secretly maintain their
relationship for a while.
The comedian talks a lot about his
experiences growing up in an environment that practically encouraged racial
oppression and segregation. It takes a strong psyche and a really good sense of
humor to laugh at some of your darkest moments and get millions of people to
laugh along with you. Noah masters this skill! He carefully chooses his words
so that he approaches sensitive topics in a funny, yet elegant manner.
If you’re willing to take a more intimate
look at the world that shaped Trevor Noah, you should check out his book Born a Crime: Stories from a South African
Childhood. Better yet, you can opt for the audiobook and listen to the
stories narrated by the author himself.
Here are 20 Trevor Noah quotes about resilience and determination
Don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.
Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.
If you laugh with somebody, then you share something.
Often, people who can do, don’t because they’re afraid of what people that can’t do will say about them doing.
The first thing I learned about having money was that it gives you choices. People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have. That is the freedom of money.
We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most.
I don't think I have thick skin, but I heal fast. It's easy to break through, but I heal fast.
Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being.
You’ll have a few bruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s okay. But after a while, the bruises fade and they fade for a reason. Because now, it’s time to get up to some s**t again.
We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others because we don’t live with them.
Love, unfortunately, sometimes gives you the ability to forgive somebody and blind yourself to the truth.
Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It's a strange feeling.
As an outsider myself, I always mixed myself with different groups...I've never been afraid to go into a different space and relate to those people, because I don't have a place where I belong and that means I belong everywhere.
If this comedy thing doesn't work out, I've always got poverty to fall back on.
Progression, in my opinion, is often identifying shortcomings - whether it's views or the things you're doing in your life, your relationships - and trying to find the places where you improve on those.
Comedy is a great tool. We are trying to find ways to use humor to enlighten people without preaching to them.
But the real world doesn't go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt. And just because it's not happening to you, doesn't mean it's not happening.
You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad. Where you either hate them or love them. But that's not how people are.
That awkward moment when you are sitting next to people who gossip too much that you are even scared of leaving them cause you know that you are next.
You have to work a bit harder to offend me because I'm from the home of some of the best racism in the world. I'm a snob when it comes to racism.
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