Humor is the most divine gift we have. Most people undervalue it. A life without laughter is like a long journey without a resting place.
There are three things which are real: God, human folly, and laughter. Since the first two pass our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third.
Humor is hope’s companion in arms. It is not brash, it is not cheap, it is not heartless. Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit.
If my life weren’t funny, it would just be true, and that would be unacceptable.
Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it. . . . Humor is when the joke is on you but hits the other fellow first—before it boomerangs. Humor is what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess was why several of us died of tuberculosis.
It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor since it is a more significant process of mind than is reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.
Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which . . . has a tremendous place in this sordid world. . . . If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.
What I’m saying might be profane . . . but it’s also profound.
Many comedians are very proud of themselves for saying the things others are supposedly afraid to say. They are at the forefront of this culture of entitlement where we get to do anything, think anything, and say anything.
I, myself, have killed six people. All random, all undetected, no way to trace them to me. And, let me tell you, there’s nothin’ like it. It’s a great feeling. Yeah, I know, you’re thinking, Aw, he’s a comedian. He’s just sayin’ that stuff. Good. That’s exactly what I want you to think.
Laughter has its limits, its risks. It can be a screen, a blinder, a way to avoid putting a bold eye on an uncomfortable reality.
That’s the saving grace of humor: if you fail, at least you don’t have anyone laughing at you.
I’m beginning to feel that the real endangered species on planet Earth are not the whales and the elephants but those of us who can laugh at the world and ourselves. . . . I fear the dry turn of the American mind, this focus on the literal, as much as I fear our capacity for self-destruction. . . . Where’s the energetic wit, the loony outlook, the frivolity, the lightness of comforting laughter?
Let me assure you that the humorless as a bunch don’t just not know what’s funny, they don’t know what’s serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn’t be trusted with anything.
There’s nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.
The body . . . is subject to the forces of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.
We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper.
