“If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.”

— Erma Bombeck

As quoted in TIME (1984), also in Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much (1993) by Jonathon Lazear and Wendy Lazear, p. 22

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope… 1927–1996

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“If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Credited to Shaw in the lead in to the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and other recent works, but this or slight variants of it are also sometimes attributed to W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Oscar Wilde. It might possibly be derived from Shaw's statement in John Bull's Other Island (1907): "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
Another possibility is that it is derived from Shaw's characteristic of Mark Twain: "He has to put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking."
Variants:
If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
Disputed