“It is the duty of the humor of any given nation in time of high crisis to attack the catastrophe that faces it in such a manner as to cause the people to laugh at it in such a way that they cannot die before they are killed.”
Lord Buckley, "H-Bomb" (comic monologue), 1960. Reported in Stephen Holden, It's Comedy! From Skit To Song To Satire http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE7DB173EF934A15753C1A96F948260 (October 27, 1989) The New York Times.
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Lord Buckley 1
American actor and comedian 1906–1960Related quotes
At a 2009 G-20 London Summit in March 2009.
Financial crisis 'caused by white men with blue eyes http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/financial-crisis-caused-by-white-men-with-blue-eyes-1655354.html, by Andrew Grice, The Independent, 27 March 2009
Misattributed to Lincoln by several authors since about 2000. Source of quote: General Douglas MacArthur is quoted as saying, "Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts" (John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur, New York: Harper, 1950, p. 61). By the 1970s, the phrase is quoted in several places without the words "Like Abraham Lincoln," and attributed directly to Lincoln. The additional phrase "and beer" first appears in a list of jokes published online in 1999.
Misattributed
“More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us.”
Ch. 21 : Conclusion http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/SP/SP22_Conclusion.htm
Social Problems (1883)
Context: More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us. We have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Falling these, civilization must pass into destruction. It cannot be maintained on the ethics of savagery. For civilization knits men more and more closely together, and constantly tends to subordinate the individual to the whole, and to make more and more important social conditions.
“We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.”
Il faut rire avant que d'être heureux, de peur de mourir sans avoir ri.
Aphorism 63; Variant translation: We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.
Les Caractères (1688), Du Coeur
“We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.”
Jean de La Bruyère, in Du Coeur
Misattributed
Arguing with Adolf Hitler about the German army being cut off in the Courland Pocket; as quoted in Inside the Third Reich : Memoirs (1971) by Albert Speer, p. 534