Quotes about comedy
1,001 quotes from 337 people
Self-respect — The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)I am his Highness’ Dog at Kew;
Pray tell me Sir, whose Dog are you?
Alexander Pope1688–1744“Epigram. Engraved on the Collar of a Dog, which I gave to His Royal Highness” (1738)I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849Marginalia (November 1844)“Socialism with a human face”? … Frankenstein also had a human face.
Garry Kasparovborn 1963Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by some philosopher.
Cicero107–43 BCDe Divinatione – On Divination (44 BC), Book II, chapter LVIII, section 119You know who critics are?— the men who have failed in literature and art.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Lothair (1870), Ch. 35Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)Sociology is the science which has the most methods and the least results.
Henri Poincaré1854–1912Science and Method (1908), Part I. Ch. 1: The Selection of Facts, p. 19There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), Ch. 1No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #41Lawyer — One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)If “pro” is the opposite of “con”, is “progress” the opposite of “congress”?
Gallagher1946–2022From the 1985 movie The Bookkeeper.We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.
Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007A Man Without a Country (2005)If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy.
Thomas Sowellborn 1930“Supreme Hypocrisy”, 29 March 2016If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
Václav Havel1936–2011Address to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London quoted in The Independent, London (24 March 1990)