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Quotes about humor

113 quotes from 83 people

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Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.
Montesquieu1689–1755Pensées Diverses
A lot of political people, especially people on the left, have forgotten the importance of humor as an incredible weapon, and a vehicle through which to affect change.
Michael Mooreborn 1954The Corporation (2004)
- Politics
Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
Christopher Morley1890–1957Inward Ho! (1923) Chapter “That One might almost say”
A witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Human, All Too Human (1878), Aphorism 202, tr. R. J. Hollingdale
- Emotion
There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.
Dorothy Parker1893–1967Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.
Will Rogers1879–1935The Illiterate Digest (1924)
There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don’t even have to exaggerate.
Will Rogers1879–1935Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom (1935)
- Government
I certainly know that [A] comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious and I don’t want either of those to happen to me til I am dead (if then).
Will Rogers1879–1935Daily Telegram #1538 (28 June 1931)
Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else.
WRWilliam Rotsler1926–1997
From there to here,
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.
Dr. Seuss1904–1991One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (1960)
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury1671–1713Often credited to Aristotle
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950The Doctor’s Dilemma (1911), Act V
- Life & Death
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950John Bull’s Other Island (1907), Act II
- Truth & Lies
The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891; 1913)
- Good & Evil
- Laughter
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Answers to Nine Questions (September 1896), answers to nine questions submitted by Clarence Rook, who had interviewed him in 1895
- Writing