Humour Quotes

• Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

  James Thurber

  Inspirational, Humor, Emotional

  The New York Post, February 29, 1960.

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• Humour is a great vehicle for getting a message across. If you get too serious, you could die of starch.

  Cyndi Lauper

  Messages, Serious, Vehicle

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• Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.

  Simon Wiesenthal

  Happiness, Smile, Laughter

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• There's no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Wonderful, Moments, Tragic

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  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

  Funny, Happiness, Happy

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• Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.

  Brooke Shields

  Funny, Life, Witty

  Testimony at House of Representatives hearings on cigarette advertising, 25 June 1981

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• Laughter is more serious than tears.

  Toni Morrison

  Laughter, Tears, Serious

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• Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

  Edward de Bono

  Funny, Wisdom, Humorous

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  Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

  Miles Kington

  Funny, Hilarious, Wise

  The Independent (UK), March 28, 2003.

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• It was a dangerous profession I had chosen ... because no one likes a funny kid. In fact, adults are scared silly of them and tend to warn children who act out that they are going to wind up in prison or worse. It is only when you grow up that they pay you vast sums of money to make them laugh.

  Art Buchwald

  Children, Growing Up, Silly

  Art Buchwald (1993). “Leaving home: a memoir”, Putnam Pub Group

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• You can't take yourself too seriously.

  LeRoy Neiman

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• Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies us another chance?

  John Updike

  Differences, Tragedy, Another Chance

  John Updike (2012). “Self-Consciousness: Memoirs”, p.238, Random House

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• A comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious.

  Will Rogers

  Comedian, Lasts, Serious

  Will Rogers, Bryan B. Sterling (1995). “Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (writers, Politicians, Comedians, Browsers ...)”, M Evans & Company

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• A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humour will stimulate a like humour in the listener.

  Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

  Moving, Musician, Revealing

  "Composers on Music : An Anthology of Composers' Writings from Palestrina to Copland". Book by Sam Morgenstern, p. 60, 1956.

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• The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again!

  Michael Flanders

  Jobs, Comforting, Purpose

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• All humor is rooted in pain.

  Richard Pryor

  Pain, Rooted

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• As soon as I got funny, I killed any majestic intentions in my work.

  William Wegman

  Majestic, Intention

  Lisa Lyons, William Wegman, Kim Levin, Walker Art Center (1982). “Wegman's world: 5 December 1982 to 16 January 1983, Walker Art Center”

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• I'm discovering there are innumerable ways to package, promote and sell my humor, as long as I reserve a little for myself to keep bouncing back and laughing off the rejections that are also part of the art of cartooning.

  Mark Evelyn Heath

  Art, Long, Laughing

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• Laughter allows us to get past the fear of death.

  Deepak Chopra

  Laughter, Past, Fear Of Death

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• All of us have schnozzles... if not in our faces, then in our character, minds or habits. When we admit our schnozzles, instead of defending them, we begin to laugh, and the world laughs with us.

  Jimmy Durante

  Character, Laughing, Mind

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• The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Laughter, Philosophy, Real

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• The owl and the pussycat went to sea, / In a beautiful pea green boat. / They took some honey, and plenty of money, / Wrapped up in a five pound note.

  Edward Lear

  Beautiful, Sea, Owl

  "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" l. 1 (1871)

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• Jokes often arise involuntarily, like dreams, and tend to be swiftly forgotten. From these similarities Freud inferred that jokes and dreams share a common origin in the unconscious. Both are essentially means of outwitting our inner 'censor'.

  Jim Holt

  Dream, Mean, Common

  Jim Holt (2008). “Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes”, p.70, W. W. Norton & Company

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• HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous.

  Alice Walker

  Heart, Laughing, Righteous

  Alice Walker (1990). “The Temple of My Familiar”

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• It is sometimes forgotten how much wit there is in certain works of abstract art. There is a certain point in undergoing anguish when one encounters the comic.

  Robert Motherwell

  Art, Encounters, Sometimes

  Robert Motherwell (1999). “The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell”

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