“Here’s my questions to anybody when they talk about comedy. When you are with your friends, who don’t judge you, what do you say? And if that’s appropriate to say with your friends, why is it not appropriate anywhere else. Like, I hate those people who judge me and are hypocrites.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I am living in a world where I am happy and doing what I love and making others happy.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I’m not good looking, but I’m not bad looking.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I have 11 sisters and 6 brothers.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I’m afraid of being poor; I’m afraid of living in the projects… I’m afraid of being thought as unsuccessful.”
― Carlos Mencia
“The really funny thing is that most all of my friends who are priests have seen me perform, and they say, ‘I wish I could talk the way you do on stage. I wish I could reveal truth to my congregation the way you do.’”
― Carlos Mencia
“I’m a spiritual person: I believe that if you read the Bible, you get what you want from it. But, when you actually read it, you see the beauty, spirituality, the joy and love, and what makes us godly.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I don’t think Latino; I think like me. If that happens to be Latino, then I guess that’s me. But it doesn’t affect my comedy in any way.”
― Carlos Mencia
“The beauty of comedy is, when people come to a comedy club, there is a certain veil of reality suspended.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I was a very cocky and unlikable young comic. But I came from the hood, and that’s what I learned.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I am a sponge. I don’t write things down.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Is it my fault that there is a stereotype that black people are not good swimmers? I know that’s a joke, but somebody will say, ‘I can’t believe you would say that.’ Well, first of all it’s just a joke, and second of all if you watch the Olympics, black people win medals in jumping, running. They don’t win any in swimming.”
― Carlos Mencia“I worked as a comedian for 23 years, 51 weeks a year.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I hate being judged.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I can’t imagine how unbelievable it would be to go to the Great Barrier Reef.”
― Carlos Mencia
“People live in a place called Tornado Alley – and they’re surprised when they get hit by a tornado. I’m sorry when they get hit by tornadoes, but when you live in Tornado Alley you can’t really claim surprise.”
― Carlos Mencia
“The fact that so many comics were waiting to jump on the bandwagon of hate toward me – what is it about me that engages this kind of behavior? I began to see it: My cockiness, my lack of hanging out with other comics. A lot of that wasn’t my fault.”
― Carlos Mencia
“All this stuff that went down, the joke-stealing accusations, me not wanting to do ‘Mind of Mencia’ anymore. All these things made me look inside myself.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I don’t want to go on stage with anger. And that’s why I worked so hard to look within and change myself and evolve.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When the comedy community turned on me, I had a lot of reflecting to do.”
― Carlos Mencia
“We don’t grow as human beings from good things happening. We grow from failures.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When I was young and didn’t have money, I liked gambling because winning and losing was fun for the rush of it.”
― Carlos Mencia
“You know what, I stopped doing ‘Mind of Mencia’ because it got hard, and there was a lot of fighting, and it was just time to move on.”
― Carlos Mencia
“The United States of America on our worst day is better than any other country on their best day. Period. End of story.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When I was a kid, I was in love with one of the ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ I told my dad, ‘I’m going to marry somebody like Cheryl Ladd.’ My dad said, ‘You’re not that good-looking, mijo. You’re going to have to make a lot of money if that’s what you want.’ I went, ‘Well, I want that, so I’m going to make money.’”
― Carlos Mencia
“I have been recording every single one of my shows since 1994. Every single joke I’ve ever done is on a hard drive. I can tell you when I wrote every joke I wrote. I can tell you the first time I said it, when I made it different, when I made it better.”
― Carlos Mencia
“At the end of the day, my career is not going to be judged by one or two or three moments in time. It’ll be judged by the longevity of it.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When you have a TV show, and you’re selling out 10,000 seats or whatever the hell it is, it’s not that it becomes easy. It’s just that’s what your life is like.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When somebody says that a comic steals jokes, it’s the ultimate betrayal of comedy.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Ten comics can say the same joke, and I’m the one who gets called a thief.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I believe that my part to play in this world is stand-up.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Acting is reacting. That’s when acting is great – when you say something, somebody said something, they make a face, they pose, they use something physical, then you react to that, then they react to you.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Well, the hard part about doing auditions is that the person reading you the lines, they’re not really into it. They’re just going, ‘Oh really, so why do you think that?’ And they’re just looking at a piece of paper.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I get really nervous at auditions. I know how to make people laugh, but auditions just really make me nervous.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When I tell a joke, I immediately know whether it’s funny or not.”
― Carlos Mencia
“The beauty of not growing up middle class is that you don’t think like the middle class. You don’t have anything to protect, you know what I mean?”
― Carlos Mencia
“I grew up being very patriotic. My parents really love this country. A big part of what they love is freedom of speech… I’m fearless because aren’t we supposed to be able to speak our mind?”
― Carlos Mencia
“Nobody calls me a racist when I do redneck jokes. Jeff Foxworthy can do as many ‘You might be a redneck jokes’ as he wants, but I’m telling you as soon as a guy like that does a black joke or something – ‘How dare you!’ I totally think it’s unfair.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I’m like most people in America. I’m conservative on some things, and I’m liberal on other things.”
― Carlos Mencia
“If I’ve got a black joke, and I can’t tell it in Oakland, then I shouldn’t tell the joke anywhere else.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Here’s the problem: People have completely and utterly forgotten one thing when it comes to communication – intent.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I had one guy say, ‘I watched your show and didn’t agree with what you said.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s a joke. How could you not agree? I can understand you saying it’s not funny.’ But it’s like my going onstage and doing a knock-knock and somebody going, ‘I disagree. There’s no door here.’”
― Carlos Mencia
“I was only 20, 21. I was basically going to college to get me out of the ghetto. A friend suggested I try stand-up.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Before I got into stand-up, I was a really quiet guy who had all these thoughts, all these things I wanted to say, but there was never anyplace for me to say them because my mom would look at me and go, ‘You better not say what you’re thinking. You better not.’”
― Carlos Mencia
“When I’m onstage, I’m on, but a different part of me is on: the part of me that absorbs life, sees everything occurring, and touches on everything around me.”
― Carlos Mencia
“What I do is that I really, really try hard to make sure the things that I do comes from a pure place in my heart and my intent is a pure one.”
― Carlos Mencia
“You can take my dirtiest, craziest joke, and I can break down in my head why there’s a good, honest, honorable reason for telling it.”
― Carlos Mencia
“In this pessimistic world, especially in America, a positive outlook is very necessary.”
― Carlos Mencia
“If you’ve never seen me perform live, I’m a must-see. I’m very funny. I have a different perspective sometimes on a lot of what I do and the world itself, especially America.”
― Carlos Mencia
“On stage, I’m really, really tall. I’m five-foot-9, but on stage, I’m, like, six-foot-5.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I don’t think I push boundaries. I find that other people feel that way. To me, it’s just about going up there and speaking the truth, whatever that is.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When I’m performing for 4,000, 5,000 people, it’s a show. It’s a rock n’ roll concert.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Chicago is pretty much my favorite city to perform in. For some reason, people from the Chicago area have an amazing attitude.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I grew up Mexican.”
― Carlos Mencia
“My choices are made out of love. When I go on stage now, I want to make people happy. I mean, when I get hecklers now, I’m nice to them!”
― Carlos Mencia
“The word ‘epiphany’ gets thrown around, but truly, the first time I stepped on stage, I had that moment of clarity. I realized God gave me a gift, and this gift is to make people laugh, and this gift should not be wasted on trying to configure some electrical components.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I grew up poor. The fact that I had to struggle to succeed, that wasn’t a big deal to me. I’d struggled my whole life.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I could always talk about being a Latino and having a Mexican mom and a Honduran dad and being from Honduras. That was always an easy go-to place. But on the other hand, it was a crutch.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I know that if any other comedian came up to me questioning something I did or said, it would be literally settled in a heartbeat. I love comedy. I give to comedy. I don’t take from comedy.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Just because my name is Carlos Mencia, don’t think my show is going to be about the difference between Mexicans and white people.”
― Carlos Mencia
“If the worst thing happening to Middle Eastern people is that Carlos Mencia is doing a joke about them being stopped at airports, that’s a pretty awesome state of affairs.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I was never funny. I’d be funny once a year at Christmas. I’d do impressions of how people talked and danced, but that stopped when I was about 11.”
― Carlos Mencia
“The easiest thing to do is put someone in a file of somebody you already know. ‘Hey, you remind me of Sam Kinison’ or ‘You remind me of Richard Pryor.’ That’s fine, because I know that’s the process. Eventually, my own file will be created.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I know I’m funny.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I’ve dated many women at the same time. But I told them. I didn’t keep any secrets from them.”
― Carlos Mencia
“For me, it’s always better to tell people the truth, because people can accept the truth.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I’ve gotten in trouble with every race you can imagine. They say, ‘I can’t believe you talked about this – you’re racist.’ And I say, ‘How can I be racist? Isn’t racism exclusionary? If all of you are offended, that means I’m including every race in my jokes.’”
― Carlos Mencia
“It’s a pleasure to be doing a show for Comedy Central. Traditional networks would cast me as the head of a household with 16 children, which I find extremely offensive because there are 18 kids in my family.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Some people want to live in a world much prettier than the one I depict. But it exists, and I talk about it because it exists.”
― Carlos Mencia
“If you ain’t laughing, you ain’t living, baby.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I am a product… I’m a comedian. I’m not curing cancer. In the end, I tell jokes. I make people laugh.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I choose to live in a positive world and a positive presence.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I like to look in the crevices of things, the nooks and the crannies. I like to see the things other people don’t see, don’t want to look at.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I never want to forget that my job is to make people laugh.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I’m a teacher and a philosopher by nature… In the end, I’m trying to teach people to live a better life. And if I can do that on top of entertain, then I leave the world a better place.”
― Carlos Mencia
“My ancestry is really weird, because my great grandfather was from the Cayman Islands, and then his father was from England. But I lose track at that point.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I am frail like everyone else, and I take that into account when I talk about things.”
― Carlos Mencia
“My comedy is about, lift yourself. See reality. Change the reality if you don’t like it. But if you can’t, then deal with things as they are because crying about it isn’t going to change anything.”
― Carlos Mencia
“If you don’t like your job, then change it by getting some better skills. Until then, shut up and get my burger with a smile, like in the commercials.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I always knew I was going to lose weight.”
― Carlos Mencia
“If I were to say that I grew up in East Los Angeles in the projects, poor, I assumed that everybody understood that it came with its own reasons for being the way I am. I didn’t get that people needed to understand where my comedy came from; I thought that they knew that.”
― Carlos Mencia
“’America is such a great country, we have fat poor people.’ It’s one of those jokes that doesn’t hit people right away, because it’s so prevalent that we don’t get it.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Guys like Rogan literally want to ruin my career. That’s unbelievably cruel and hurtful, and I never want to be that guy.”
― Carlos Mencia
“The weight loss came about because a buddy of mine who was diagnosed with diabetes because of his obesity told me that I was fat. And I started laughing, and he was like, ‘No seriously, you’re fat.’ And I said, ‘Oh wow, really.’”
― Carlos Mencia
“I was never one of those fat-victim people. I always have to address how much weight I lost, and people always realize then how fat I was.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Here’s what I know about the business I am in. It’s all based on money. It’s all based on ratings.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When I was younger, I was angry. I was boisterous and loud. I was on top of the mountain, screaming at everybody, ‘Look at me!’ Now I’m more of a Taoist.”
― Carlos Mencia
“One of the better moments in life is when you get your own car.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I am an extremist.”
― Carlos Mencia
“People that love me, love me. But the people that hate me really hate me.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I don’t do anything out of negativity anymore.”
― Carlos Mencia
“My favorite place is Maui. It’s almost perfect there – the people, the weather, just everything. No matter how busy you are, when you get to Maui, you chill and relax.”
― Carlos Mencia
“The cool thing about going to Vegas is that it’s kind of like visiting a bunch of cities all at one time. All the shows and great restaurants leave you with a lot of options.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I was born in Honduras, and everything there is really chill, and people don’t worry about having to get something overnighted by FedEx. Maui has that same sort of vibe, but everyone speaks English.”
― Carlos Mencia
“It’s not hard to lose weight.”
― Carlos Mencia
“Shows I’ve done in war zones are the greatest. The first time I was in Iraq, I kid you not, I felt so uncomfortable having the troops say, ‘Thank you.’ It’s so deep and heartfelt.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I’m just trying to be funny, trying to make people laugh, and trying to make the world a better place through some jokes. I don’t have words for it. It’s so overwhelming.”
― Carlos Mencia
“My birth name is Ned Mencia.”
― Carlos Mencia
“When I was born, I was given to my uncle and aunt to raise as their kid because they couldn’t have kids.”
― Carlos Mencia
“I will make a joke about any of my family members, about me, about my wife, if I really thought that I’m doing it to be funny. If there’s some darkness to it, or I think it’s ill-willed or mean or not cool, then I won’t do it.”
― Carlos Mencia
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