About Humor

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.
A. Whitney Brown
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
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
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
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
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)
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)
Life is tough, and if you have the ability to laugh at it you have the ability to enjoy it.
Salma Hayek
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)