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

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

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.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Mel Brooks

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

Trilling, Lionel

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

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

Martin, Steve

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

10.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

11.

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

12.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

13.

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

14.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

15.

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

Lewis Mumford

16.

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

Fredrich

17.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

18.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

19.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

20.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

21.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

22.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

23.

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

Horace

24.

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

Salma Hayek

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

27.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

28.

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

29.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Twain, Mark

30.

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

31.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

32.

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

Nelson, Lord

33.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

34.

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

Edward De Bono

35.

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

36.

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

Hughes, Langston

37.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

38.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

39.

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

Jeph Jacques

40.

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

Diller, Phyllis

41.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

42.

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

James Thurber

43.

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

Procter, J. J.

44.

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

Horace Walpole

45.

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

46.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

47.

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

Proverb, Chinese

48.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

49.

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

50.

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