“My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.”
Act II
Source: 1900s, John Bull's Other Island (1907)
“The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.”
Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous" http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/09/16vonnegut1.html, McSweeny's (September 2002)
Various interviews
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Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
“My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world.”
Muhammad Ali
(1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist
This is actually from Ali's autobiography "The Greatest". However, this was said by Don King to George Foreman.
Misattributed
“I am apt to hire musicians sometimes because I know they will have some good jokes to tell.”
Mark Heard
(1951–1992) American musician and record producer
Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary
“Jokes? There are no jokes. The truth is the funniest joke of all.”
Muhammad Ali
(1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist
Edmond Rostand
(1868–1918) French writer
Speaking to the Académie française in 1903, as quoted by John Lahr in "Fighting and Writing" in The New Yorker (12 November 2007) http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2007/11/12/071112crth_theatre_lahr
Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 4. The Gene machine
“Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.”
William Hazlitt
(1778–1830) English writer
"On Wit and Humour"
Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)
