Politics & Power Quote by Milos Forman

Forman frames humor less as entertainment than as civic infrastructure: a survival tool smuggled through centuries of bad weather. Coming from a Czech director who lived under Nazi occupation and then Communist rule before emigrating, that word "survive" lands with historical weight. He is talking about a national habit forged under censorship, invasions, and bureaucracies that demanded public obedience while provoking private disbelief. In that kind of pressure cooker, jokes become a parallel language: you can say what you are not allowed to say, and you can recognize who else understands.

The line’s slightly awkward syntax ("not important only for me") reads like an immigrant’s English, but it also telegraphs the point: humor isn’t a personal quirk, it’s a collective technology. Forman is implicitly rejecting the romantic myth of the solitary artist. His films, from The Firemen’s Ball to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, treat institutions as absurd machines and laughter as both rebellion and diagnosis. The joke isn’t merely a punchline; it’s a way to puncture the official story without giving the authorities a clean target.

There’s also a quiet provocation in "for this nation for centuries". Forman positions humor as a kind of continuity more durable than borders or regimes. The subtext: if power relies on solemnity and fear, then comedy is not trivial - it’s a refusal to let the state monopolize reality. Humor keeps people human, and that, in Forman’s worldview, is the first step toward staying free.