Source: Monty Python's Flying Circus
“Jokes? There are no jokes. The truth is the funniest joke of all.”
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
“Thank you. God told me to wear it.
That's a joke.”
Responding to a compliment on his suit from European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso (November 2005) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4421818.stm
2000s, 2005
“He who laughs last may be the joke.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)
“It’s better to get the last laugh than the joke.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)
“Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same.”
A letter to his wife Polly (October 1938) http://bernie.cncfamily.com/sc/excalibur.htm, quoted in Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987), p. 81 http://www.discord.org/~lippard/bfm/bfm05.htm#81.
Context: Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same. The entire function of man is to survive. The outermost limit of endeavour is creative work. Anything less is too close to simple survival until death happens along. So I am engaged in striving to maintain equilibrium sufficient to at least realize survival in a way to astound the gods. I turned the thing up so it's up to me to survive in a big way... Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed.
“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)
“My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world.”
This is actually from Ali's autobiography "The Greatest". However, this was said by Don King to George Foreman.
Misattributed
