Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Mel Brooks

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

Johnson, Samuel

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

Fredrich

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

Martin, Steve

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.

Truman, Harry S

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

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

10.

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

Mary Hirsch

11.

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

Eva Hoffman

12.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

13.

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

Trilling, Lionel

14.

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

Conrad, Joseph

15.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.

Beecher, Henry Ward

16.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.

Albee, Edward

17.

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

Jeph Jacques

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Proverb, Chinese

21.

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

Horace

22.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

23.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

24.

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

25.

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

Gary, Roman

26.

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

27.

The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jokes and his imagination for his facts.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

28.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Mark Twain

29.

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

Bruce, Lenny

30.

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

Clark, Dick

31.

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.

32.

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

Diller, Phyllis

33.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

34.

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

35.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

36.

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

Lewis Mumford

37.

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

Martin, Steve

38.

There are things of deadly earnest that can only be mentioned under the cover of a joke.

Procter, J. J.

39.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

40.

A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it.

Herold, Don

41.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

42.

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Hughes, Langston

47.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

48.

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

49.

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

Edward De Bono

50.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb