"One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter"
About this Quote
The intent is double-edged. “Virtues” points to laughter as intimacy on fast-forward: a brief conspiracy of pleasure that collapses distance, class, and self-seriousness. Sagan’s world - the brittle glamour and emotional brinkmanship of postwar French bourgeois life - runs on such moments. People in her work often avoid confession, but they’ll reveal themselves in what they find funny, and with whom they dare to laugh. Shared laughter becomes a shorthand for trust.
Then she flips it: “dangers.” Laughter can be exclusion disguised as joy, a weapon that sanitizes cruelty. It can also anesthetize; when everything becomes a joke, nothing has to be faced. That’s the subtext: laughter bonds, but it also recruits. It creates an “us” that can harden into a “them.”
Finally, “power” names what the line has been circling: collective laughter rewrites the room’s hierarchy. It punctures authority, crowns new insiders, turns embarrassment into control. Sagan isn’t romanticizing it; she’s warning that the sweetest social glue is also a solvent.
Quote Details
| Topic | Friendship |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sagan, Francoise. (2026, January 18). One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-can-never-speak-enough-of-the-virtues-the-14481/
Chicago Style
Sagan, Francoise. "One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-can-never-speak-enough-of-the-virtues-the-14481/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-can-never-speak-enough-of-the-virtues-the-14481/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.













