2,109 quotes
A funny thing happened on the way to the election - I got to the Senate first.
Pierre Salinger
Public Servant · American · 1925 – 2004
One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.
Francoise Sagan
Playwright · French · 1935 – 2004
People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poet · English · 1772 – 1834
In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.
Bobby Farrelly
Director · American · b. 1958
Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.
Woody Allen
Director · American · b. 1935
It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
J. D. Salinger
Novelist · American · 1919 – 2010
The English had hit upon a splendid joke. They intended to catch me or to bring me down.
Manfred von Richthofen
Aviator · German · 1892 – 1918
It is a strange enterprise to make respectable people laugh.
Moliere
Playwright · French · 1622 – 1673
There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.
Joseph Roux
Clergyman · French
Johnny Carson started the jokes about me and Marlin in his monologues.
Jim Fowler
Scientist · American · b. 1932
What laughter is to childhood, sex is to adolescence.
Martha Beck
Author · American · b. 1962
A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
George Orwell
Author · British · 1903 – 1950
Laughter is America's most important export.
Walt Disney
Cartoonist · American · 1901 – 1966
Also, in a funny way, if you have been happily married there are no unresolved areas, nothing to prove to yourself after the other dies.
Nigella Lawson
Journalist · British · b. 1960
Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?
Frank Moore Colby
Educator · American
They want to let the audience figure things out and let the reaction shot get the laugh.
Barry Sonnenfeld
Producer · American · b. 1953
She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.
P. G. Wodehouse
Writer · English · 1881 – 1975
Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.
Charles Lamb
Critic · English · 1775 – 1834
Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they're short stories, that theory of building suspense is still there.
Sergio Aragones
Cartoonist · Spanish · b. 1937
I think being funny is not anyone's first choice.
If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.
Erma Bombeck
Journalist · American · 1927 – 1996
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.
Doug Larson
Cartoonist · American
Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Writer · American · 1860 – 1935
Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
Ken Kesey
Author · American · 1935 – 2001
Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.
Lionel Trilling
Critic · American · 1905 – 1975
A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.
Jessamyn West
Author · American · 1902 – 1984
Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.
Max Eastman
Author · American · 1883 – 1969
Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.
James Lipton
Educator · American · b. 1926
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
Robert A. Heinlein
Writer · American · 1907 – 1988
You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things.
Comedy makes the subversion of the existing state of affairs possible.
Dario Fo
Playwright · Italian · b. 1926
There is always a secret irritation about a laugh into which we cannot join.
Agnes Repplier
Writer · American · 1855 – 1950
When you tell an Iowan a joke, you can see a kind of race going on between his brain and his expression.
Bill Bryson
Writer · American · b. 1951
Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh because he knows that I'm not a chef.
Laughter is the valve on the pressure cooker of life. Either you laugh and suffer, or you got your beans or brains on the ceiling.
Wavy Gravy
Activist · American · b. 1936
The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke.
Goldwin Smith
Historian · Canadian · 1823 – 1910
Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.
Anthony Burgess
Novelist · English · 1917 – 1993
The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise.
Publilius Syrus
Writer · Roman
He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish.
Georg Brandes
Critic · Danish · 1842 – 1927
We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.
Joseph Heller
Novelist · American · 1923 – 1999
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
Vaclav Havel
Leader · Czechoslovakian · b. 1936
I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.
Slavoj Zizek
Philosopher
Almost every venerable tradition at a men's club starts out as a joke.
Joe Bob Briggs
Critic · American · b. 1953
If a man is tongue-tied, don't laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs.
Abraham Cahan
Author · Lithuanian
In terms of the creative side of it, it's really been a thing where you come up with the funny stuff is usually at a bar or out talking to people or whatever.
Trey Parker
Artist · American · b. 1969
Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Novelist · French · b. 1873
A little perspective, like a little humor, goes a long way.
Allen Klein
Businessman · American · b. 1931
