High Times interview (2002)
Context: Usually, my witticisms are composed on the spot. They're simply intrinsic; an inseparable, integral, organic part of my writing process — doubtlessly because humor is an inseparable, integral part of my philosophical worldview. The comic sensibility is vastly, almost tragically, underrated by Western intellectuals. Humor can be a doorway into the deepest reality, and wit and playfulness are a desperately serious transcendence of evil. My comic sense, although deliberately Americanized, is, in its intent, much closer related to the crazy wisdom of Zen monks and the goofy genius of Taoist masters than it is to, say, the satirical gibes on Saturday Night Live. It has both a literary and a metaphysical function.
Source: Epigrams, p. 346
What I Saw at the Revolution : A Political Life in the Reagan Era (1990), p. 179
Context: Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature. John Kennedy had wit, and so did Lincoln, who also had abundant humor; Reagan was mostly humor.
“Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.”
Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Source: The Importance of Living
“Humor bridges the weight of serious reflection.”
interview with Lorin Morgan-Richards by Rose Traul of Columbia College Chicago (22 January 2013).
“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile”
XIV. 463–466 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Context: Tis sweet to play the fool in time and place,
And wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile,
The grave in merry measures frisk about,
And many a long-repented word bring out.
“Humor is also a way of saying something serious.”
“Humor could not flourish in a wholly serious and rational atmosphere.”
Planet Without Laughter (1980)
“Philosophy … bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.”
“Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12
