2,109 quotes
My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate, which had a commentary track that wasn't even the filmmakers, it was a professor, some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy.
Jay Roach
Director · American
The most casual examination will reveal the fact that all the jokes about the horrible results of masculine cooking and sewing are written by men. It is all part of a great scheme of sex propaganda.
Heywood Broun
Journalist · American · 1888 – 1939
The hall-mark of American humour is its pose of illiteracy.
Ronald Knox
Theologian · English · b. 1888
A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.
Max Eastman
Author · American · 1883 – 1969
In polite society one laughs at all the jokes, including the ones one has heard before.
Frank Dane
Memories are doing funny things to us.
Milos Forman
Director · Czechoslovakian · b. 1932
Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.
Bill Nye
Educator · American · b. 1955
Laughter is inner jogging.
Norman Cousins
Editor · American · b. 1915
I'm not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don't want to play to that crowd. I don't.
Chris Matthews
Journalist · American · b. 1945
I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican.
Marion Berry
Politician · American · b. 1942
Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.
Romain Gary
Novelist · Russian · 1914 – 1980
A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.
Hugh Sidey
Journalist · American · 1927 – 2005
Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don't remember me at all.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Author · American · 1867 – 1957
Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.
Irvin S. Cobb
Journalist · American · 1876 – 1944
I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line.
Roman Polanski
Director · b. 1933
You don't get a chance to take a breath but when you do, you have some really good comedy moments that ease up on the tension that the movie is centered around which is Kim being kidnapped and her son and husband being kidnapped and the jeopardy that they're in.
David R. Ellis
Director · American · b. 1952
Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of revolutionary avant-gardism.
Terry Eagleton
Critic · English · b. 1943
Laughter is ever young, whereas tragedy, except the very highest of all, quickly becomes haggard.
Margaret Sackville
Poet · English
Only man has dignity; only man, therefore, can be funny.
Since the goal of my programs is to show audiences how humor can both help them heal as well as deal with not-so-funny stuff, I decided to discuss the events of the previous week, the pain all of us were feeling, and how humor and some laughter might be beneficial.
Allen Klein
Businessman · American · b. 1931
Yes, I see the Mobile Base System really is the shoulder of the arm. The arm is right there, like a human arm. It's really funny to look at the similarities between a human arm and the Canadian robotics arm.
Philippe Perrin
Astronaut · French · b. 1963
The best scary movies have great humor in them and a great story.
Stephen Sommers
Director · American · b. 1962
Housekeeping ain't no joke.
Louisa May Alcott
Novelist · American · 1832 – 1888
The president of General Motors was in a foul humor.
Arthur Hailey
Novelist · Canadian · 1920 – 2004
People go to the zoo and they like the lion because it's scary. And the bear because it's intense, but the monkey makes people laugh.
Lorne Michaels
Producer · Canadian · b. 1944
It's funny that there was so much disturbance about having a Catholic in the White House with Kennedy, and when we finally get a religion in the White House that's causing a lot of conflicts, and concerns, and disturbances for a lot of people, it's in the Bush Administration.
Roger Ebert
Critic · American · b. 1942
Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films.
Douglas Sirk
Director · German · 1897 – 1987
Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.
Adam Smith
Economist · Scottish · 1723 – 1790
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Rafael Sabatini
Novelist · Italian · 1875 – 1950
It's okay to laugh in the bedroom so long as you don't point.
Will Durst
Writer · American
If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you're going to have a musical comedy administration.
Robert Moses
Public Servant · American · 1888 – 1981
A civil servant doesn't make jokes.
Eugene Ionesco
Dramatist · French · 1912 – 1994
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosopher · Austrian · 1889 – 1951
When part of what you're trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh.
Todd Solondz
Writer · American · b. 1959
Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.
Prudent people are very happy; 'tis an exceeding fine thing, that's certain, but I was born without it, and shall retain to my day of Death the Humour of saying what I think.
Mary Wortley Montagu
Writer · English · 1689 – 1762
We neither laugh alone, nor weep alone, why then should we pray alone?
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Poet · English · 1743 – 1825
But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.
Jerry Zucker
Director · American · b. 1950
Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.
Ned Rorem
Composer · American · b. 1923
These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country, and they are the reason why it is so expensive, or one of the reasons, it's so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run.
Michael Bloomberg
Honestly we never lied to people about who we were. Usually the wackier interviews came to pass because the interview subjects, aware that we were Comedy Central, just wanted to get their stories out.
Mo Rocca
Writer · American · b. 1969
Jackass: The Movie is great. I think it's in the tradition of physical comedy, which I'm really interested in. Its relationship to gravity, and how gravity acts on the body.
Matthew Barney
Artist · American · b. 1967
The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense.
Jacob August Riis
Journalist · Danish · 1849 – 1914
Kids enjoy laughing and are seldom bored when they find something funny. They also ask questions, often to adults, because they understand that the more words they can comprehend about a funny story or a joke, the more they'll enjoy it.
Brian P. Cleary
Author · American · b. 1959
You may not like the humor, but that is why every radio has an on-off button.
Mel Karmazin
Businessman · American · b. 1943
Hypocrisy is great fodder for comedy.
I recently did the David Letterman Show about my book. He was very serious and made no jokes and it caught me off guard a little bit. He was much more serious than some of the joke shows that journalists get on.
Bob Woodward
Journalist · American · b. 1943
The commentary track became a lot like the movie and there are some funny, long, awkward pauses that you can tell we're just trying to find stuff to say. None of us had gotten to really talk about the movie until that moment and they were in New York and we were in L.A.
