Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Trilling, Lionel

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

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

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

10.

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

James Thurber

11.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

12.

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

Martin, Steve

13.

One never needs their humor as much as when they argue with a fool.

Proverb, Chinese

14.

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

Mel Brooks

15.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

16.

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

Salma Hayek

17.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

18.

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

Herold, Don

19.

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.

20.

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

James Thurber

21.

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

22.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Mary Hirsch

26.

We never respect those who amuse us, however we may smile at their comic powers.

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

27.

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

Seabury, David

28.

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

Rourke, Constance

29.

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

Procter, J. J.

30.

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

31.

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

Eva Hoffman

32.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

33.

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

Edward De Bono

34.

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

Horace Walpole

35.

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

36.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

37.

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

Bruce, Lenny

38.

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

Knox, Ronald

39.

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

40.

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

Fredrich

41.

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

A. Whitney Brown

42.

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

Clark, Dick

43.

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

44.

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

Martin, Steve

45.

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

Bill Nye

46.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

47.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

48.

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

49.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

50.

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