Motivational Quotes

Humor

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

- Mel Brooks

Best Quotes about Humor

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

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

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

Williamson, Nicol

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

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

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

A. Whitney Brown

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

Conrad, Joseph

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

Martin, Steve

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 by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

Edward De Bono

12.

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

Hughes, Langston

13.

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

Gary, Roman

14.

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

15.

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

Martin, Steve

16.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

17.

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

Joubert, Joseph

18.

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

19.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

20.

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

James Thurber

21.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

22.

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

23.

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

Eva Hoffman

24.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

25.

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

Strachey, Lionel

26.

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

Clark, Dick

27.

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

Jeph Jacques

28.

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Bruce, Lenny

29.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

30.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

31.

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

32.

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

Seabury, David

33.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

34.

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

35.

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

36.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

Charlie Chaplin

37.

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

Mel Brooks

38.

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

Horace

39.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Eco, Umberto

40.

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

Salma Hayek

41.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

42.

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

Albee, Edward

43.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

44.

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

Trilling, Lionel

45.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

46.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

47.

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

Proverb, Chinese

48.

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

49.

Where ever you find humor, you find pathos close by it side.

Whipple, Edwin P.

50.

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