Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

Best Quotes about Humor

Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

If you're at school and you're not that bright or good-looking or popular or whatever, and one day you say something and someone laughs, well, you sort of grab onto it, don't you? you think, well I run funny and I've got this stupid big face and big thighs and no-one fancies me, but at least I can make people laugh. And It's such a nice feeling, making someone laugh, that maybe you get a bit reliant on it. Like, if you're not funny then you're not... anything.

David Nicholls

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

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

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

Edward De Bono

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

Hughes, Langston

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.

Colton, Charles Caleb

10.

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

11.

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

12.

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

14.

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

15.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

16.

Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?

Colby, Frank Moore

17.

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

Williamson, Nicol

18.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

19.

Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.

Lewis Mumford

20.

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

21.

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

Hemingway, Ernest

22.

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.

A. Whitney Brown

23.

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

Horace Walpole

24.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

25.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Eco, Umberto

26.

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

Mary Hirsch

27.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

Bruce, Lenny

28.

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

29.

Isn't it sad how some people can't be funny, so they have to settle for being obnoxious?

30.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

31.

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

32.

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

Horace

33.

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

Clark, Dick

34.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

35.

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.

Conrad, Joseph

36.

The hall-mark of American humor is its pose of illiteracy.

Knox, Ronald

37.

Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

Martin, Steve

38.

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

39.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

40.

Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.

Muir, Frank

41.

Good humor isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.

Seabury, David

42.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

43.

Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor. He will always use it in evidence against you.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

44.

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

David Nicholls

45.

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

Gary, Roman

46.

A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never ceased to be amused.

Maclaine, Shirley

47.

Humor is, I think, the sublets and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers

Rosten, Leo

48.

One never needs their humor as much as when they argue with a fool.

Proverb, Chinese

49.

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.

50.

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

James Thurber