I never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it’s been something that I’ve always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at.
AASIF MANDVIThis was in the ’70s and there was a lot of racism towards South Asians and there was a lot of hazing and bullying and racism that really probably shaped me in some way in terms of, like, wanting to get out of there.
More Aasif Mandvi Quotes
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In America, you have this kind of individualism and in the West, essentially, you have this individualism – this idea of my own personal fulfillment.
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You can get samosas in any pub in England today, pretty much. So, “Gunga Din” has come back.
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Voter fraud does just barely exist, while racism, according to the Supreme Court, is a thing of the past.
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We are Muslims. My father would pawn off his Muslim in-laws as Hindus just so that he could get free pancakes.
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I think that hijacks the spirituality and beauty that exists within Islam. I believe in allowing Islam to be seen in context and in its entirety and being judged on what it really is, not what you think it is.
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I think family dynamics are definitely very interesting. And in my case my sister did get married. She gave my parents a grandchild.
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Statistically there is enough voter fraud to sway zero elections.
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An artist’s job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It’s not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.
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I grew up on American pop culture so everything that I fantasized about to get out of this sort of humdrum world of Bradford was about America. So when we decided to move there I was on the plane.
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Of course the law’s not racist.
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I think politicians and comedians have a lot in common. One is a group of approval-seeking narcissists who will say and do anything to be liked… and comedians are always talking about politics.
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I’ve always said I’m the worst representative of Muslim-Americans that’s ever existed, because I’ve been inside more bars than mosques.
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I think Islam has been hijacked by the idea that all Muslims are terrorists; that Islam is about hate, about war, about jihad
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If people invited Muslims into their home every week by way of a TV show would go a long way to making people feel comfortable with Muslims and countering misconceptions about who we are. Plus, of course, that will make it easier for us to impose sharia law across America.
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When you’re brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.
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For anybody who’s ever been on the other end of, like, racial violence logic is not something that can be used.
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I’m not really a food connoisseur.
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Because to Americans, Chechnya might as well be a suburb of Narnia.
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If you don’t acknowledge differences, it’s as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone.
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The great joy of doing ‘The Daily Show’ for me is that I get to sit on the fence between cultures. I am commenting on the absurdity of both sides as an outsider and insider. Sometimes I’m playing the brown guy, and sometimes I’m not, but the best stuff I do always goes back to being a brown kid in a white world.
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North Carolina precinct chairman and GOP executive committee member Don Yelton thinks his state’s new voting restrictions are just fine.
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Re-colonizing it and sort of reverse-colonizing it to the point that today the national dish of Great Britain is Chicken Tikka Masala.
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I don’t want to tell people what they should think.
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Samantha Bee said to me when I first started on the “Daily Show”, she was like no – there is no – the only way you’ll learn this job is by doing this job.
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If you choose to be a Muslim then you believe that it is on some level wrong to show the image of the Prophet Muhammad.
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Getting chased home from the bus stop after school by English kids, boarding school, being targeted for praying to what they call Allah wallah ding dong.
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