Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Best Quotes about Humor

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

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

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

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

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

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Herold, Don

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

Horace

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

10.

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

11.

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

Dick Clark

12.

Where ever you find humor, you find pathos close by it side.

Whipple, Edwin P.

13.

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

14.

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

James Thurber

15.

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

16.

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

Martin, Steve

17.

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

Horace Walpole

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.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

20.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

21.

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

Diller, Phyllis

22.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

23.

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

Charlie Chaplin

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

28.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

29.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

30.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

31.

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

James Thurber

32.

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

E. B. White

33.

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

Eva Hoffman

34.

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

Conrad, Joseph

35.

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

Wilson, Flip

36.

A brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball.

Strachey, Lionel

37.

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

Lewis Mumford

38.

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

Fredrich

39.

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

40.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

Williamson, Nicol

42.

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

Trilling, Lionel

43.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

44.

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