Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Trilling, Lionel

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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

Martin, Steve

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

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

13.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

14.

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

James Thurber

15.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

16.

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

Edward De Bono

17.

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

A. Whitney Brown

18.

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

Clark, Dick

19.

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

Warhol, Andy

20.

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

Salma Hayek

21.

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

22.

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

Mel Brooks

23.

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

Albee, Edward

24.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

25.

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

David Nicholls

26.

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

27.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

28.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

29.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

30.

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

Fredrich

31.

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

Bill Nye

32.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

33.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

34.

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

35.

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

Joubert, Joseph

36.

A brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball.

Strachey, Lionel

37.

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.

38.

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

Bruce, Lenny

39.

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

Eva Hoffman

40.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

42.

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

Conrad, Joseph

43.

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

44.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

45.

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

Jeph Jacques

46.

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

47.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

48.

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

Horace Walpole

49.

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

Diller, Phyllis

50.

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