Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Proverb, Chinese

Best Quotes about Humor

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

Albee, Edward

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

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

Martin, Steve

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

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

Lewis Mumford

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

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

Nelson, Lord

10.

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

11.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

12.

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

Conrad, Joseph

13.

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

14.

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

Bruce, Lenny

15.

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

16.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

20.

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

James Thurber

21.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

22.

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

Horace Walpole

23.

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

24.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

25.

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

Proverb, Chinese

26.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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

28.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

29.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

30.

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

Procter, J. J.

31.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

32.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

33.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

34.

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

Eva Hoffman

35.

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

Salma Hayek

36.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

37.

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

38.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

39.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

40.

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

Fredrich

41.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

42.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

43.

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

44.

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

James Thurber

45.

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

Gary, Roman

46.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

47.

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

48.

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

Warhol, Andy

49.

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

50.

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

Jeph Jacques