Motivational Quotes

Humor

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

- Mel Brooks

Best Quotes about Humor

Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth -- a sense of humor.

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

Socrates

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.

Trilling, Lionel

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

Martin, Steve

The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.

Kathryn L. Nelson

An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.

Rourke, Constance

10.

What's the point of havin'a rapier wit if I can't use it to stab people?

Jeph Jacques

11.

We never respect those who amuse us, however we may smile at their comic powers.

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

12.

Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.

Bill Nye

13.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

Gandhi, Mahatma

14.

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?

Warhol, Andy

15.

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

Nelson, Lord

16.

Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law.

Clark, Dick

17.

Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

King, Florence

18.

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.

Keillor, Garrison

19.

Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.

Diller, Phyllis

20.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

22.

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Bruce, Lenny

23.

Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.

Mary Hirsch

24.

Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.

Kleiser, Grenville

25.

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

Gary, Roman

26.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

27.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

Charlie Chaplin

28.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.

Horace

29.

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.

James Thurber

30.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.

Mel Brooks

31.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

La Bruyere, Jean De

32.

Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don't get sick you're missing half the fun.

Wilson, Flip

33.

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

34.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

35.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

36.

Humor is a whisper from the soul, imploring mind and body to relax, let go and be at peace again.

37.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.

John Kenneth Galbraith

38.

An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.

Irving, Washington

39.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

40.

Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?

Dick Clark

41.

I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice.

Johnson, Samuel

42.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people --that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

Thurber, James

43.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

James Thurber

44.

The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

45.

There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

Eva Hoffman

46.

If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything with her.

Williamson, Nicol

47.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

Smith, Alfred E.

48.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Carlyle, Thomas

49.

Humor has been a fashioning instrument in America, cleaving its way through the national life, holding tenaciously to the spread elements of that life. Its mode has often been swift and coarse and ruthless, beyond art and beyond established civilization. It has engaged in warfare against the established heritage, against the bonds of pioneer existence. Its objective --the unconscious objective of a disunited people --has seemed to be that of creating fresh bonds, a new unity, the semblance of a society and the rounded completion of an American type.

Rourke, Constance

50.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov