Motivational Quotes

Humor

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

- Seldes, Gilbert

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Edward De Bono

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

Socrates

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

Trilling, Lionel

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

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

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

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

Fredrich

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

Twain, Mark

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

10.

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

Martin, Steve

11.

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

Hughes, Langston

12.

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

Clark, Dick

13.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

14.

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

Proverb, Chinese

15.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

16.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

18.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

19.

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

20.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

21.

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

Diller, Phyllis

22.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

23.

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

24.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

25.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

26.

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

James Thurber

27.

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

Martin, Steve

28.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

29.

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

30.

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

Dick Clark

31.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

32.

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

33.

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

Joubert, Joseph

34.

If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything with her.

Williamson, Nicol

35.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

36.

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

37.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

38.

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

Salma Hayek

39.

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

40.

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

Eva Hoffman

41.

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

Nelson, Lord

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

46.

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

Gary, Roman

47.

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

Horace Walpole

48.

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