Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.
Bill Nye, Interview with Wired.com, April 2005
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
Charlie Chaplin (1889 - 1977), in My Autobiography (1964)
Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Colette (1873 - 1954), Chance Acquaintances, 1952
A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.
David Nicholls, One Day, 2010
If you're at school and you're not that bright or good-looking or popular or whatever, and one day you say something and someone laughs, well, you sort of grab onto it, don't you? you think, well I run funny and I've got this stupid big face and big thighs and no-one fancies me, but at least I can make people laugh. And It's such a nice feeling, making someone laugh, that maybe you get a bit reliant on it. Like, if you're not funny then you're not... anything.
David Nicholls, One Day, 2010
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?
Dick Clark
A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
E. B. White (1899 - 1985), Some Remarks on Humor, introduction
Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
Edward De Bono
There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.
Eva Hoffman
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole (1717 - 1797)
If there's one thing I know it's God does love a good joke.
Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only weblog, 05-01-04
The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
James Thurber (1894 - 1961)
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
James Thurber (1894 - 1961), in Edward R. Murrow television interview
What's the point of havin' a rapier wit if I can't use it to stab people?
Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content, #1615, March 2010
Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006)
The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.
Kathryn L. Nelson, Pemberley Manor, 2006
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.
Larry Gelbart
Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.
Lewis Mumford (1895 - 1990)
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.
Mary Hirsch
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks (1926 - )
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
Mel Brooks (1926 - )
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)
Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.
Pico Iyer, Time
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), Letters and Social Aims: The Comic, 1876
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)
