Famous Humor Quotes

"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven"

Mark Twain, Author

"Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges"

Thomas W. Higginson, Clergyman

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is"

Francis Bacon, Philosopher

"In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge"

George Herbert, Poet

"A joke is a very serious thing"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

"Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile"

J.B. Priestley, Writer

"A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles"

Mignon McLaughlin, Journalist

"A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself"

Clifton Fadiman, Writer

"Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals"

Agnes Repplier, Writer

"Humor does not diminish the pain - it makes the space around it get bigger"

Allen Klein, Businessman

"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road"

Henry Ward Beecher, Clergyman

"Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse"

Groucho Marx, Comedian

"You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it"

Bill Cosby, Comedian

"Wit is the lowest form of humor"

Alexander Pope, Poet

"Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time"

Steven Wright, Comedian

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing"

William James, Philosopher

"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious"

Peter Ustinov, Actor

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it"

E. B. White, Writer

"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility"

James Thurber, Comedian

"Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost"

James Thurber, Comedian

"I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor"

Edward Albee, Dramatist

"Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don't get sick you're missing half the fun"

Flip Wilson, Comedian

"A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself"

Jessamyn West, Author

"My computer beat me at checkers, but I sure beat it at kickboxing"

Emo Philips, Comedian

"A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life"

William Arthur Ward, Writer

"A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it"

Don Herold, Writer

"Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding"

Agnes Repplier, Writer

"When a thought takes one's breath away, a grammar lesson seems an impertinence"

Thomas W. Higginson, Clergyman

"Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain"

Edward de Bono, Psychologist

"All I know about humor is that I don't know anything about it"

Fred Allen, Comedian

"Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear"

Thomas W. Higginson, Clergyman

"Gags die, humor doesn't"

Jack Benny, Comedian

"A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life"

Hugh Sidey, Journalist

"Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end"

Sid Caesar, Actor

"Humor can alter any situation and help us cope at the very instant we are laughing"

Allen Klein, Businessman

"A laugh is a surprise. And all humor is physical. I was always athletic, so that came naturally to me"

Chevy Chase, Comedian

"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it"

Frank Howard Clark, Writer

"Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you"

Langston Hughes, Poet

"A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself"

Doug Larson, Cartoonist