Happiness Quote by Shirley MacLaine

Self-mockery, in Shirley MacLaine's hands, isn’t a parlor trick; it’s a survival skill and a kind of portable joy. “The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused” lands because it flips the usual goal of self-improvement. Instead of promising perfection or peace, it promises entertainment - an ongoing supply of it - by changing who holds the punchline. If you can aim the joke at yourself, you’re less at the mercy of other people’s judgments. You become, in a small but meaningful way, unbullyable.

The subtext is especially show-business: fame is a machine for turning humans into characters, and characters into targets. An actress with a long public life understands that the world will narrate you whether you consent or not. Laughing at yourself is a form of narrative control. It doesn’t erase vulnerability; it metabolizes it. The “never cease” is the sly part - it suggests aging, embarrassment, failure, even vanity are not problems to solve but raw material to reuse.

Context matters: MacLaine’s persona has always mixed glamour with candor, and, at times, a willingness to be seen as eccentric. In that light, the line reads like hard-won advice from someone who’s endured reviews, reinventions, and the shifting rules for women in public. It’s not asking for self-loathing disguised as humor; it’s advocating a flexible ego. If you can laugh at yourself, the world can’t lock you into one fixed, brittle version of who you’re supposed to be.