quotations about humor
I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things -- because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself.
WOODY ALLEN
interview, Der Spiegel, June 20, 2005
Gags die, humor doesn't.
JACK BENNY
attributed, The Ultimate Book of Quotations
Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.
STEVE ALLEN
How to Be Funny: Discovering the Comic in You
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Love's Labour's Lost
Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter to us that humanity highly rewards members of one of the most unusual professions on earth, those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. This is very strange if you stop to think of it: that otherwise sane and responsible citizens should devote their professional energies to causing others to make sharp, explosive barking-like exhalations.
STEVE ALLEN
Funny People
A sense of humor is a great resource against the problems of everyday life, a shield against the too serious effect of the tragic, and a wonderful remedy for petty annoyance. People whose humorous perception is keen become philosophers and are able to see the interrelations, causes and effects, and the nature of all parts of life; they thereby avoid taking any one part too seriously. They also refuse to take themselves too seriously, and are thereby spared many heartaches and problems.
MAURICE HINSON
Humor in Piano Music: Baroque to Modern
Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Defence Remains Open!"
The man with the real sense of humor is the man who can put himself in the spectator's place and laugh at his own misfortunes. That is what I am called upon to do every day.
BERT WILLIAMS
"The Comic Side of Trouble", The American Magazine, January 1918
Good humor is the suspenders that keep our working clothes on.
AMERICAN PROVERB
Think of what would happen to us in America if there were no humorists; life would be one long Congressional Record.
THOMAS L. MASSON
attributed, Phillips' Treasury of Humorous Quotations
I think if you have a comic perspective, almost anything that happens you tend to put through a comic filter. It's a way of coping in the short term, but has no long term effect and requires constant, endless renewal. Hence people talk of comics who are "always on." It's like constantly drugging your sensibility so you can get by with less pain.
WOODY ALLEN
The Paris Review, fall 1995
Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Opus 200
That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.
JOHN LENNON
BBC interview, May 8, 1969
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
PETER USTINOV
attributed, Morrow's International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations
Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh;
And 'tis no marvel he is so humorous.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV, Part I
Humor is often considered to be trivial, and it seems that serious talk about humor is regarded as participating in that triviality. A presumption seems to exist that the consequential cannot emerge from a contemplation of the trivial.
ELLIOTT ORING
Engaging Humor
As soon as you realize everything's a joke, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.
ALAN MOORE
Watchmen
Humor is when the joke is on you but hits the other fellow first.
LANGSTON HUGHES
prefatory note, The Book of Negro Humor
Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it or you don't. You can't attain it. There are terrible forms of professional humor, the humorists' humor. That can be awful. It depresses me because it is artificial. You can't always be humorous, but a professional humorist must. That is a sad phenomenon.
HEINRICH BÖLL
The Paris Review, spring 1983
Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor.
WILL ROGERS
The Illiterate Digest