Tweet of the Day (Stephen Colbert, on a Selection for His Book Club)

“Join cOlbert's Book Club and read THE GREAT GATSBY by 5/9. I don't want to give too much away, but it's a book.”—Late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert, Apr. 26, 2013 tweet

I say read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic by 4/10, the centennial of its publication. It won’t take you long, and you definitely won’t regret it!

Quote of the Day (Stephen Colbert, on Cynicism, ‘A Self-Imposed Blindness’)

“Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.”—American comic and late-night talk-show host Stephen Colbert, Commencement Address at Knox College, Galesburg, IL, June 3, 2006

The traditional commencement exercises that had been scheduled for yesterday by my alma mater were cancelled a few days ago.

I’m not going to retrace the words and actions that led to this decision. But I thought I would offer for students there and elsewhere in this tumultuous year a replacement of sorts, a throwback to another commencement address, from Stephen Colbert nearly two decades ago.

Extreme idealism—demands expected be fulfilled immediately—is also blindness. But the deformed moral vision that Colbert identified is more deadly in the long run, because it withers the soul day by day.

If you want to know something close to my philosophy on change, I can think of few lines better than these, from Bernard Malamud’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Fixer:

“I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer—he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.”

Quote of the Day (Stephen Colbert, on Trump and ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’)

“One thing we’ve learned from the last two years of Donald Trump is that, what it seems like he’s doing is exactly what he’s doing. There’s no grand strategy. He’s not some puppet master, he’s not some wizard playing three-dimensional chess. He’s playing Hungry Hungry Hippos—he’s just slapping until he gets all of the marbles.”—The Late Show host Stephen Colbert, discussing President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, quoted in Tufayel Ahmed, “Stephen Colbert Presents 'Trump's Letters' Firing Comey,” Newsweek, May 11, 2017

TV Quote of the Day (Stephen Colbert, on Obama’s Employment Record)

“You've employed a lot of people, mostly as secretary of defense." —Stephen Colbert to Barack Obama, on The Colbert Report, December 8, 2014, on the President’s nomination of his fourth Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, quoted in Dan Merica, “Obama Fills in for Stephen Colbert,” CNN.com, December 9, 2014

Quote of the Day (Stephen Colbert, on the Pope’s Resignation)

“Can't believe the pope quit. It's like that old saying goes: ‘Does the pope quit in the woods?’ I'm pretty sure I got that right.”—Comedian (and practicing Catholic) Stephen Colbert, on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, February 11, 2013 tweet

TV Quote of the Day (Stephen Colbert, With Advice for Kids of Tiger Moms)

“Get back to that Mendelssohn concerto before she drowns your bunny!”—Comic Stephen Colbert, advising children subjected to the Chinese parenting strategies summarized in Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, quoted in Dave Itzkoff, “Arts Beat: “Tiger Mother’ in Stephen Colbert’s Den,” The New York Times, January 26, 2011