Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Bill Nye

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

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

Eco, Umberto

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

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

Lewis Mumford

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

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

10.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

11.

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?

Warhol, Andy

12.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

13.

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

Nelson, Lord

14.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

15.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

16.

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

Conrad, Joseph

17.

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

Horace

18.

What's the point of havin'a rapier wit if I can't use it to stab people?

Jeph Jacques

19.

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

Knox, Ronald

20.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

21.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

22.

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

Socrates

23.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

24.

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

Edward De Bono

25.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

26.

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

Procter, J. J.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

30.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

31.

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

Johnson, Samuel

32.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

33.

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

34.

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

Albee, Edward

35.

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

36.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

37.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

38.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

39.

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

Mary Hirsch

40.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

41.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

42.

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

Eva Hoffman

43.

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

Charlie Chaplin

44.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

45.

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

46.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Carlyle, Thomas

47.

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

Joubert, Joseph

48.

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

49.

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

Mel Brooks

50.

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