Motivational Quotes

Humor

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

- Reiner, Carl

Best Quotes about Humor

1.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Eco, Umberto

2.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

3.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

4.

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

5.

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

6.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

7.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

8.

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

Joubert, Joseph

9.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

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.

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

Horace Walpole

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.

Keillor, Garrison

16.

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

Wilson, Flip

17.

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

Nelson, Lord

18.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

19.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

22.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

23.

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

24.

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

Edward De Bono

25.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

26.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

27.

Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.

Bill Nye

28.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

29.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

30.

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

31.

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

Conrad, Joseph

32.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

33.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

34.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

35.

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

Martin, Steve

36.

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

37.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

38.

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

James Thurber

39.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

40.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

41.

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

Mary Hirsch

42.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

43.

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

Salma Hayek

44.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Bruce, Lenny

48.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

49.

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

Socrates

50.

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