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

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

Trilling, Lionel

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

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

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

Wilson, Flip

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Joubert, Joseph

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

Martin, Steve

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

10.

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

11.

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

Fredrich

12.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

13.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

14.

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

Jeph Jacques

15.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

16.

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.

17.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

18.

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

19.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

20.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

21.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

Twain, Mark

23.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

26.

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

27.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

28.

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

Proverb, Chinese

29.

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

30.

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

Procter, J. J.

31.

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

32.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

33.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Rourke, Constance

37.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

38.

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

Mel Brooks

39.

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

40.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

41.

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

Lewis Mumford

42.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

43.

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

Conrad, Joseph

44.

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

James Thurber

45.

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

46.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

47.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

48.

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

Charlie Chaplin

49.

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

50.

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

James Thurber