Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

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

Knox, Ronald

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

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

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

Lewis Mumford

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

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

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

10.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

11.

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

Proverb, Chinese

12.

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

Warhol, Andy

13.

There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

Joubert, Joseph

14.

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

Mary Hirsch

15.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

16.

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

Charlie Chaplin

17.

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

Seabury, David

18.

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.

19.

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

Edward De Bono

20.

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

Bruce, Lenny

21.

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

Horace Walpole

22.

Humor -- the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole.

23.

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

24.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

25.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

26.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

27.

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

28.

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

Borge, Victor

29.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

30.

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

Horace

31.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

32.

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

Gary, Roman

33.

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

34.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

35.

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

A. Whitney Brown

36.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

37.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Twain, Mark

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.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

40.

Life is tough, and if you have the ability to laugh at it you have the ability to enjoy it.

Salma Hayek

41.

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

Eco, Umberto

42.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

43.

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

Jeph Jacques

44.

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

Martin, Steve

45.

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

James Thurber

46.

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

47.

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

Trilling, Lionel

48.

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

Conrad, Joseph

49.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

50.

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