Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Albee, Edward

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

Strachey, Lionel

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

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

Gary, Roman

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

Bruce, Lenny

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

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

Hughes, Langston

10.

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

11.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

12.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

13.

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

14.

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

Trilling, Lionel

15.

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

Fredrich

16.

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

17.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

18.

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

Williamson, Nicol

19.

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

Socrates

20.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

21.

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

22.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

23.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

24.

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

Edward De Bono

25.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

26.

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

27.

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

28.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

La Bruyere, Jean De

29.

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

Dick Clark

30.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

31.

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

32.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people --that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

Thurber, James

33.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

34.

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

Lewis Mumford

35.

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

36.

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

A. Whitney Brown

37.

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

Seabury, David

38.

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

Knox, Ronald

39.

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

40.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

41.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

Diller, Phyllis

43.

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

44.

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

Twain, Mark

45.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

46.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

47.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.