“There is no more terrible fate for a comedian than to be taken seriously.”

—  Barry Humphries

My Life as Me: A Memoir (2002)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 22, 2020. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is no more terrible fate for a comedian than to be taken seriously." by Barry Humphries?
Barry Humphries photo
Barry Humphries 4
Australian comedian and actor 1934

Related quotes

“To remain alone did not seem to me a terrible fate, no worse than being falsely joined to another person.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: American Wife

Thomas Mann photo

“Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6

Wilhelm Von Humboldt photo

“How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

As quoted in International Proverbs (2000) by Luzano Pancho Canlas, p. 40

Muhammad al-Taqi photo

“Man's death by sins is more than his death by fate and his life by charity is more than his life by age.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]

“Plato was accused by some of his twentieth-century critics of racism, totalitarianism, fascism, and other political crimes with a very contemporary flavor. These accusations are too anachronistic to be taken seriously; whatever explains Hitler and Mussolini, it is not the dialogues of Plato. The more plausible complaint is that Plato does not take seriously the inescapability of politics in some form. Plato’s metaphysics is fascinating; so is his conviction that the just man does better than the unjust man, no matter what earthly fate befalls him. His political thinking often amounts to an injunction to abolish the conflicts that politics exists to resolve and fantasies about how it might be done.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 2 : Plato and Antipolitics

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Freier Wille ohne Fatum ist ebenso wenig denkbar, wie Geist ohne Reelles, Gutes ohne Böses.
"Fatum und Geschichte," April 1862

Matt Ridley photo

“Yet the myth persists that genetic determinism is a more implacable kind of fate than social determinism.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 22 “Free Will” (p. 308)

Theodore Dalrymple photo

“His greatest fear, or nightmare, is not to be thought hip or cool, and if to avoid that terrible fate it means that he has to glamorize evil--well, so be it.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)

Tony Abbott photo

“Obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope - no more than hope, no more than hope - that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

About Malaysia Airlines MH370, quoted on BBC News, "Malaysia flight MH370: New data 'shows possible debris'" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26705073, March 23, 2014.
2014

Related topics