Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- James Thurber

Best Quotes about Humor

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

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.

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

Johnson, Samuel

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

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

Horace Walpole

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

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

10.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

11.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

12.

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

13.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

14.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

15.

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

Hughes, Langston

16.

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

17.

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

Trilling, Lionel

18.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

19.

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

Martin, Steve

20.

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

Charlie Chaplin

21.

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

22.

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

Fredrich

23.

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

Lewis Mumford

24.

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

Wilson, Flip

25.

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

Salma Hayek

26.

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

27.

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

A. Whitney Brown

28.

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

Conrad, Joseph

29.

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

30.

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

Edward De Bono

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.

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

Joubert, Joseph

33.

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

34.

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

Mary Hirsch

35.

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

36.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

37.

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

Williamson, Nicol

38.

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

Martin, Steve

39.

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