“The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.”

— James Thurber

Television interview with Edward R. Murrow on TV show Small World, CBS-TV (25 March 1959); transcript published in New York Post
Letters and interviews

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James Thurber 90

American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright 1894–1961

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“When I hear artists or authors making fun of business men, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.”

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Reported in various works including Eugene C. Gerhart, Quote It Completely!: World Reference Guide to More Than 5,500 Memorable Quotes from Law and Literature (1998), p. 113, which cites the quote to MENCKEN, HL, A New Dictionary of Quotations, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957, p. 134. However, the authorship of the quote does not lie with any work original to Mencken, and was previously reported as an anonymous quote.
Misattributed

“The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.”

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James Thurber 90

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