Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

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

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

Dick Clark

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

Conrad, Joseph

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

10.

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

11.

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

Seabury, David

12.

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

13.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

14.

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

Bruce, Lenny

15.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

16.

Keillor, Garrison

17.

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

Charlie Chaplin

18.

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

Hughes, Langston

19.

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

Trilling, Lionel

20.

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

21.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

22.

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

Strachey, Lionel

23.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

24.

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

Clark, Dick

25.

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

Diller, Phyllis

26.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

27.

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

28.

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

29.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

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

Horace Walpole

31.

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

Salma Hayek

32.

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

Gary, Roman

33.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

34.

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

Procter, J. J.

35.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

36.

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

37.

Isn't it sad how some people can't be funny, so they have to settle for being obnoxious?

38.

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

39.

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

Joubert, Joseph

40.

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

41.

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

A. Whitney Brown

42.

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

Herold, Don

43.

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

Mary Hirsch

44.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

45.

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

Knox, Ronald

46.

There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

Eva Hoffman

47.

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

Albee, Edward

48.

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

49.

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

Martin, Steve

50.

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

Mel Brooks