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

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

James Thurber

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

Maclaine, Shirley

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

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

Martin, Steve

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

King, Florence

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

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

James Thurber

10.

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

11.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

12.

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

Charlie Chaplin

13.

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

Salma Hayek

14.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

15.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

16.

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

Lewis Mumford

17.

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

Knox, Ronald

18.

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

19.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

20.

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.

21.

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

Martin, Steve

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Diller, Phyllis

25.

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

Bruce, Lenny

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Seabury, David

29.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

30.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

31.

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

32.

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

Trilling, Lionel

33.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

34.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

35.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

36.

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

Socrates

37.

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

Conrad, Joseph

38.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

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.

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

Rourke, Constance

41.

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

Herold, Don

42.

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

Joubert, Joseph

43.

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

Horace

44.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

45.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

46.

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

47.

Humor is, I think, the sublets and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers

Rosten, Leo

48.

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

49.

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

Hughes, Langston

50.

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