“Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.”
As quoted in TIME magazine (21 July 1961)
Context: The American public highly overrates its sense of humor. We're great belly laughers and prat fallers, but we never really did have a real sense of humor. Not satire anyway. We're a fatheaded, cotton-picking society. When we realize finally that we aren't God's given children, we'll understand satire. Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.
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Bill Mauldin 15
American editorial cartoonist 1921–2003Related quotes
“I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.”
Variant: I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land
“Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing.”
“That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.”
The Big Picture: An American Commentary (1991)
“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”
“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”
"A Note on Humor", from The Book of Negro Humor https://books.google.com/books?id=60FkAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Humor+is+laughing+at+what+you+haven%27t+got+when+you+ought+to+have+it.%22, p. vii (1966)
“Jim giggled when he laughed. His sense of humor could be sly and wicked.”
About, "Jim Henson's Muppets legacy lives on 25 years after his death" by Bill Prady