Quotes about humor
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“Reporter: President Jiang, do you think it’ll be good for Mr. Tung to serve another consecutive term?
Jiang: That’ll be good!
Reporter: Does Central Government support him too?
Jiang: Of course yes!
Reporter: Recently European Union has published a report saying that Beijing will affect and influence the nomocracy of Hong Kong in some ways. What's your response to that?
Jiang: Never heard before.
Reporter: It’s Chris Patten who said that.
Jiang: You the media should always remember that Seeing is believing. You should judge by yourself after you have received the news, got it? In case you say these things out of thin air for him, you may share the responsibility in some way.
Reporter: Now in such an early time, you said that you supported Mr. Tung, will that give people the impression that there is already an internal decision or imperial appointment on Mr. Tung?
Jiang: There's no such implication whatsoever. Everything should be done in accordance with Hong Kong Basic Law and the election laws.
Reporter: But…
Jiang: Replying what you've just asked me, I could have said "No comment." But you guys wouldn't be happy. So what should I do?
Reporter: Then Mr. Tung…
Jiang: I did not say that imperially appointing him to serve the next term. You asked me whether I support him or not, I support him. I can tell you explicitly.
Reporter: President Jiang…
Jiang: You all… My feeling is that you the media need to learn more. You are very familiar with the Western set of value, but after all you are too young. Do you understand what I mean? Let me tell you, I've been through hundreds of battles. I've seen a lot. Which country in the West have I not been to? Every time… You should know Mike Wallace in the US. He's way above you all. He and I talked cheerfully and humorously, which is why the media need to raise your intellectual level. Got it or not?
Reporter: President Jiang…
Jiang: I'm anxious for you all truly. You really… I… You guys are good at one thing. Wherever you go to all over the world, you always run faster than Western journalists. But the questions you keep asking - are too simple, sometimes naive. Understand or not? Got it or not?
Reporter: But could you say why you support Tung Chee-hwa?
Jiang: I'm very sorry. Today I am speaking to you as an elder, not as a journalist. I am not a journalist. But I've seen too much. I have this necessity to tell you a bit of my life experience.
Jiang: I just wanted to… Every time… In Chinese we have saying, "Make a fortune quietly." If I had said nothing, that would have been the best. But I thought I've seen all of you so enthusiastic. If I said nothing, that wouldn't be good. So, a moment ago you just insisted… In spreading the news, if your reports are inaccurate, you must be responsible. I did not say giving an imperial appointment. No such meaning. But you insisted on asking me whether I supported Mr. Tung or not. He is still the current Chief Executive. How could we not support the Chief Executive?
Reporter: But if we talk about his serving another term…
Jiang: To serve another term, you must follow the law of Hong Kong. Of course, our right to make the decision is also very important, since the Hong Kong SAR belongs to the Central Government of the People's Republic of China. When it gets to the right time, we'll let you know our decision. Understand what I say? You all. Don't provoke an uproar. Don't make it a flash-news saying that "It has already been imperially appointed" and criticize me. You all! Naive! I'm angry! I just offend you today! Your behavior like this is annoying!”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

As quoted in "Former president Jiang Zemin unleashes a long tirade after a Hong Kong reporter asks him if Beijing had issued an "imperial order" to support Tung Chee-hwa in his bid to seek a second term as Chief Executive" https://www.facebook.com/shanghaiist/videos/10152728897091030 (October 2014), Facebook. 2000s, Hong Kong reporters make Jiang see red

Life, Happiness, People, World

“The man with the real sense of humor is the man who can put himself in the spectator's place and laugh at his own misfortunes.”

Bert Williams (1874–1922) American comedian and actor

Bert Williams, The comic side of trouble, January 1918, American Magazine 85, 33-34, 58-60. Quoted in From traveling show to vaudeville: theatrical spectacle in America, 1830-1910, 2003, Robert M. Lewis, JHU Press, ISBN 0801870879.

Sense

“Our Judeo-Christian culture is far superior to the Islamic one. I can give you a million reasons. But here is an important one. We have got humor and they don't. There is no humor in Islam. … Islam does not allow free speech, because free speech shows how evil and wrong Islam is. And Islam does not allow humor, because humor shows how foolish and ridiculous it is.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Speech at Muhammad Cartoon Contest, Garland, Texas (3 May 2015) http://geertwilders.nl/index.php/94-english/1924-speech-geert-wilders-at-muhammad-cartoon-contest-garland-texas-3-may-2015 2010s

Evil

“…remember that the antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize clear ideas. Or as Emerson insisted, the development of consciousness, consciousness, consciousness. And with consciousness a more refined conscientiousness, and most of all, that tolerance which takes the form of humor, for when Americans can no longer laugh at each other, they have to fight one another.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"Address to the Harvard College Alumni, Class of 1949" (1974), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 429.

Idea, Fight

“The fact is we are all, no matter where we live, surrounded constantly by stories, whether they are literal, oral or visual…the benign story I'm really growing tired of is the "humorous" story of the blonde woman who is either injured or humiliated all in order to sell beer. Not funny. I am tired of these stories. I am angered by these stories. There are other stories far more wondrous — stories of women claiming and reclaiming power, stories of rage and resistance and indefatigable courage, and stories of women and some men — reaching across great divides and into the most treacherous places on Earth where turmoil reigns and violence against women is unchecked, taking the hands of those women, helping to lift them up and leading them toward safety and sanctuary and self-determination.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Speech at private fundraiser for V-Day (March 2008) http://www.jennifer-beals.com/media/speeches/vday.html.

Women, Men, Courage, Beer

“The man dissatisfied with the world will be dissatisfied with himself, so as to be continually eaten up by his own ill humor. And in such a state of mind how can he retain health?”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838)

Health, World

“I began studying philosophy and economics about the same time. The similarity of the two disciplines struck me at once. I found no difficulty in grasping the differences between the great philosophical systems as they were presented by our textbooks and our teachers. Economic theory was easier still. Indeed, I thought the successive systems of economics were rather crude affairs compared with the subtleties of the metaphysicians. Having run the gamut from Plato to T. H. Green (as undergraduates do) I felt the gamut from Quesnay to Marshall was a minor theme. The technical part of the theory was easy. Give me premises and I could spin speculations by the yard. Also I knew that my 'deductions' were futile…
Meanwhile I was finding something really interesting in philosophy and in economics. John Dewey was giving courses under all sorts of titles and every one of them dealt with the same problem — how we think… And, if one wanted to try his own hand at constructive theorizing, Dewey's notion pointed the way. It is a misconception to suppose that consumers guide their course by ratiocination—they don't think except under stress. There is no way of deducing from certain principles what they will do, just because their behavior is not itself rational. One has to find out what they do. That is a matter of observation, which the economic theorists had taken all too lightly. Economic theory became a fascinating subject—the orthodox types particularly — when one began to take the mental operations of the theorists as the problem…
Of course Veblen fitted perfectly into this set of notions. What drew me to him was his artistic side… There was a man who really could play with ideas! If one wanted to indulge in the game of spinning theories who could match his skill and humor? But if anything were needed to convince me that the standard procedure of orthodox economics could meet no scientific tests, it was that Veblen got nothing more certain by his dazzling performances with another set of premises…
William Hill set me a course paper on 'Wool Growing and the Tariff.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

I read a lot of the tariff speeches and got a new sidelight on the uses to which economic theory is adapted, and the ease with which it is brushed aside on occasion. Also I wanted to find out what really had happened to wool growers as a result of protection. The obvious thing to do was to collect and analyze the statistical data... That was my first 'investigation'.
Wesley Clair Mitchell in letter to John Maurice Clark, August 9, 1928. Originally printed in Methods in Social Science, ed. Stuart Rice; Cited in: Arthur F. Burns (1965, 65-66)

Way, Behavior, Game, Idea

“I had always regarded the world of political humor as the exclusive domain of white men and immediately disqualified myself from participation. I know better now, its immensely pleasing when I'm referred to as a political comedian…”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, MENTAL COLONIZATION

Men, World

“If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader really isn't sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend that they're amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the “form of funny,” which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness.”

Chuck Klosterman Eating the Dinosaur

Eating the Dinosaur (2009)

Age, Failure, Laughter, Chance

“He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or must have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance-wheel which we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as strong a confidence in his opinions and in the necessity of bringing the universe into conformity with them as he had in youth. In a world the very condition of whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre who is certain that he has any clarified residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflection, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding mankind by the button while he is expounding it.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

On Democracy (6 October 1884)

Men, Youth, Age, World

“Life is nothing without a good sense of humor.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)

Life, Sense

“I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Letter 11 to Grimarest: Passages Concerning the Abbe de St. Pierre's 'Project for Perpetual Peace (June 1712). Taken from Leibniz: Political Writings (2nd Edition, 1988), Edited by Patrick Riley.

Peace, Fight, Dead

“When all is done, human life is, at the greatest, and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.”

William Temple (1881–1944) Archbishop of Canterbury

Miscellanea (4th ed. pub. 1705), Part II, "Of Poetry".

Life

“I was taking LSD periodically, every couple of months. I was in a strange state of mind, influenced by these visions. … I was trying to draw it in my sketchbook, and that began to coalesce into these comic strips that were stylistically based on grotesque, vulgar humor comics of the thirties and forties. … All of those characters came out of that crazy visionary period that I couldn’t shut off. It was spontaneous, but I was so crazy, I was really out of my mind, it was like schizophrenia. It was like what produces art by crazy people in a madhouse. Anything could be an influence, anything I heard. I was in Chicago in early ’66 and the radio was on, there was some tune playing, it was a black station, and this announcer said, That was Mr. Natural. I just started drawing Mr. Natural, this bearded guru-type character in my sketchbook, it just came out.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

"R. Crumb, The Art of Comics No. 1" http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6017/the-art-of-comics-no-1-r-crumb, The Paris Review, Summer 2010, No. 193.

People, Art, Nature, Drawing

“He liked the style, that wry gallows humor armed with the semblance of omniscience; a most serviceable style it was, the dialect of the initiated, protecting them from their disillusionments, their fears, their well-concealed childish hopes.”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Liquidation (2003)

Fear, Hope

“Machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs, and having beliefs seems to be a characteristic of most machines capable of problem solving performance. However, the machines mankind has so far found it useful to construct rarely have beliefs about beliefs, although such beliefs will be needed by computer programs that reason about what knowledge they lack and where to get it. Mental qualities peculiar to human-like motivational structures, such as love and hate, will not be required for intelligent behavior, but we could probably program computers to exhibit them if we wanted to, because our common sense notions about them translate readily into certain program and data structures. Still other mental qualities, e. g. humor and appreciation of beauty, seem much harder to model.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

" Ascribing Mental Qualities to Machines http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/ascribing.html" (1979) Sect. 1: Introduction. Reprinted in Formalizing Common Sense: Papers By John McCarthy, 1990, ISBN 0893915351 1970s

Love, Hate, Beauty, Behavior

“Sir George Ross (Federal Cabinet, Premier of Ontario)– “Mackenzie was sui generis a debater. His humorous sallies blistered like a blast from a flaming smelter. His sterling honesty is a great heritage, and will keep his memory green to all future generations.””

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Ross 1913, p. 31
His Character

Memory, Future

“He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.”

Jerome David Salinger book Nine Stories

Nine Stories (1953), For Esmé — with Love and Squalor (1950)

Life, Sense

“To conclude, if we call light, those rays which illuminate objects, and radiant heat, those which heat bodies, it may be inquired whether light be essentially different from radiant heat? In answer to which I would suggest that we are not allowed, by the rules of philosophizing, to admit two different causes to explain certain effects, if they may be accounted for by one. …If this be a true account of the solar heat, for the support of which I appeal to my experiments, it remains only for us to admit that such of the rays of the sun as have the refrangibility of those which are contained in the prismatic spectrum, by the construction of the organs of sight, are admitted under the appearance of light and colors, and that the rest, being stopped in the coats and humors of the eye, act on them, as they are known to do on all the other parts of our body, by occasioning a sensation of heat.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" on his discovery of the infrared light.

Color, Support, Light, Appearance

“You ask of me then for what reason it was that Pythagoras abstained from eating of flesh. I for my part do much admire in what humor, with what soul or reason, the first man with his mouth touched slaughter, and reached to his lips the flesh of a dead animal, and having set before people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could give those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little before lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the blood of slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could bear their scent; and how the very nastiness happened not to offend the taste, while it chewed the sores of others, and participated of the saps and juices of deadly wounds.”

Plutarch book Moralia

I, 1
Moralia, Of Eating of Flesh

People, Soul, Animals, Parting

“If I had to pick a religion, I'd pick Buddhism. Buddhism is a kindly religion. It says you got a chance… it's got humor, it's got wisdom, it says to be nice to each other. All the rest of them have gods that want to beat the crap out of you if you defy the rules.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Interviewed by J. Michael Straczynski Clue book for the computer version of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream http://infidels.org/kiosk/author/harlan-ellison-207.html

Wisdom, God, Religion, Chance

“President Ford used humor a great deal.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Gail Russell Chaddock (January 3, 2007) "Congress tries Ford's way - The late president's emphasis on compromise is recalled as the 110th Congress is set to convene", Christian Science Monitor, p. 1.

“There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are. … These occasions are rare, but they happen — despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths…”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"Fear and Loathing in Elko" Rolling Stone (23 January 1992)
1990s

Fate, Boy, Drink, Support

“I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

Book-of-the-Month Club News (May 1985).

“Crowd men have no sense of humor. It is very difficult to educate solemn and opinionated people.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 89

Men, People, Education, Sense

“the charm of King was that he saw what others did and a great deal more. His wit and humor; his bubbling energy which swept every one into the current of his interest; his personal charm of youth and manners; his faculty of giving and taking, profusely, lavishly, whether in thought or in money as though he were Nature herself, marked him almost alone among Americans.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Money, Youth, Nature, Personality

“Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Case for Comedy", Lanterns & Lances http://books.google.com/books?id=m0RZAAAAYAAJ&q=%22humor+and+pathos+tears+and+laughter+are+in+the+highest+expression+of+human+character+and+achievement+inseparable%22&pg=PA143#v=onepage (1961); previously appeared in The Atlantic Monthly November 1960 http://books.google.com/books?id=6q8GAQAAIAAJ&q=%22and+pathos+tears+and+laughter+are+in+the+highest+expression+of+human+character+and+achievement+inseparable%22&pg=PA98#v=onepage From Lanterns and Lances‎

Tear, Laughter

“Schumann's humor is rarely either witty or light: the unrealizable musical structure, the musical motto hidden and partly inaudible, must have stirred his musical fantasy.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound

Music, Light

“She was by some standards slovenly, failing to see any virtue in made beds, since, as she put it, you are either asleep or somewhere else. On her birthdays she was sad. This tradition traced to earliest childhood, when she had consistently misinterpreted her birthday parties to mean that she was dying. Why else would the world be going to such exorbitant lengths to cheer her up?
Science was her first love. Long after the preschool years, she aspired to know the why of everything. Why babies had a Babinski reflex, and why the reflex disappeared. Why people licked their upper lips when concentrating, and why there was humor. Tez wanted to understand light. She wanted to solve mud, decipher rocks, and unlock grass.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 4 (p. 48)

Love, People, World, Sadness

“A God who cannot smile, could not have created this humorous universe.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Bhakti

God, Smile, Universe

“Nigel's six feet sprawled all over the place; his gestures were nervous and little uncouth; a lock of sandy coloured hair dropping over his forehead, and the deceptive naïveté of his face in repose gave him a resemblance to an overgrown prep. schoolboy. His eyes were the same blue as his uncle's, but shortsighted and noncommittal. Yet there was an underlying similarity between the two. A latent, sardonic humor in their conversation, a friendliness and simple generosity in their smiles, and that impression of energy in reserve which is always given by those who possess an abundance of life directed towards consciously-realised aims.”

Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972) English poet

Thou Shell of Death (1936)

Life, Smile

“Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

People, Dogs, Thinking, Time

“I remember when humor was gentle pokes. I used to call it 'arm around the shoulder' humor. Now they go for the jugular and they take no prisoners. It's mean, mean stuff.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Steve Lowery (October 23, 1993) "What's So Funny? Humor Comes Under Harsh Glare of Political Correctness", Press-Telegram, p. C1.

“We developed a shorthand language of our own which we fell into for the rest of our lives whenever we met, no holds barred — all a matter of past reference, a common language, but basically affection, along with humor, and appreciation of each other’s minds, and of Krazy Kat. Faced with England, and the New World, and Freud and all, we always managed to relax, and go back to the kidding, and bad punning, and drinking, to the end. It really was marvelous.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

On his friendship with T. S. Eliot
The Paris Review interview (1963)

World, Drink, Past

“Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion…The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way…with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?"”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?
The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (2000)

Love, Wisdom, God, World

“I think we all thought the show would be good, but I didn't ever assume it would catch on in a mass audience sort of way, that's unexpected, and we're flattered and relieved. Our characters act silly, even totally ridiculous at times, and most of our jokes don't come out of pop cultural references, he added. It seems like we're aiming at a child audience, but everyone can laugh at the basic human traits that are funny. It's playful, the humor is playful, the world is playful. You can kind of let go.”

Stephen Hillenburg (1961–2018) American marine biologist, cartoonist, animator, storyboard artist, director, producer, and writer

FOR YOUNG VIEWERS; For This Scientist, Children Are Like, er, Sponges http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/tv/for-young-viewers-for-this-scientist-children-are-like-er-sponges.html (July 29, 2001)

World, Way, Thinking, Time

“I intend to make this day forward the first day of the rest of my life. We can change our lives. You say, 'Well, what's wrong with your life, Michael?' Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with my life, but it's not what I want it to be. I don't feel that I'm inspiring people in the way I want to inspire them. You see, you can inspire through hate; you can inspire through love, hope, humor – the positives. I look at the history of the world, and I look at the world today, and I realize that if we don't inspire each other through positive attributes – love, hope and humor – we're gonna descend into the barbarism of the Left and the barbarism of ISIS. You like me to be hard, you like me to be tough, you like me to give you the breaking news, you like me to be cynical, you like me to analytical, you like me to give you stuff that you don't hear anywhere else – I get that. But there's a limit to that. There's a lot of area beyond all that.I think of Christmas. Christianity is the religion of peace. Christianity is the true religion of peace. 'Turn the other cheek.' 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' These are messages that come from Christianity. What can you do in an age of deceit and lies and terror? You can go to church again. However un-needing you think you really are, you know in your heart that there's something missing in you. You know that you crave something greater. Because the human being is not a dog. We are unique creatures. And we need something different than the bear, the dog, the snake and the eagle. What is that thing that we need? It's that 'thing' called God.The media has promulgated the idea, and promoted the idea, that we only need food and fornication. And so when people are empty that's what they seek. And when they are really empty, what happens? They become drug addicts. They start with marijuana, they end up with heroin, crack, you name it. As God has been driven out of America, drugs have entered America. What does an empty soul look to do? An empty soul looks to fill itself. Just as an empty vessel needs to be filled with a liquid to be complete, an empty human being needs to fill itself to be complete. And how does it fill itself? I know, again, many of you will laugh because you're cynical; it's through those things I'm talking about – inspiration. Do you think a musician can play one day without inspiration from somewhere? The greatest artists in the history of the world were not drug-addicts. They were usually God-addicts. Look at the greatest art in history, you'll find most of them were super religious people, who literally saw God in their living room, and they took the power of God and that was transmitted through the paintbrush, or through that piece of marble. How could a man like Rodin take a piece of inert stone, and inside that stone see the essence of the human form, and sculpt from that block of inert stone, a marble, the portrait of a human being that looks so real – a hundred years later I go and look at them in the museum, and literally inside that carved eye I can see the person; how is that possible? How? It's a different show than I've ever done in my 21 years, because each day to me – I must tell you – I see as my last day, my last day on Earth.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015

Love, Life, God, Hate

“My mother … had a wonderful sense of humor, and I learned from her that the highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.”

Richard Feynman book What Do You Care What Other People Think?

"The Making of a Scientist," p. 19
What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988)

Understanding, Sense, Laughter, Learning

“I fall into the category of Weird West, but I think it may be more of a “Down West” as I’d like to call it, for its sense of macabre western humor.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

interview with Lorin Morgan-Richards by Laura LaVelle of Newswhistle (28 November 2017).

Thinking, Sense

“Ernest Bramah's China, then, is the fantastic bogus China of convention, not the real historical thing at all. He wrote of it in a prose so perfectly conceived that it becomes a miracle of style. As Hilaire Belloc once observed, the sly humor and philosophy of Bramah's stories is a trick he achieves by pretending to adapt the flavor of Chinese literary conventions into the English. But the thing I love most about the tales is their irony and the brilliance of their wit.”

Ernest Bramah (1868–1942) English author

Lin Carter Discoveries in Fantasy (London, 1974) pp. 5-6.
Criticism

Love

“Lord Peter Wimsey: She has a sense of humor… and brains… life wouldn't be dull. One would wake up, and there would be a whole day full of jolly things to do. And then we would come home and go to bed… and that would be jolly too.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Strong Poison

Strong Poison (1930)

Life, Home, Sense

“An unfriendly fairy godmother presented him with a keen sense of humor. Nothing is more fatal in politics. --Colonel Edward M. House, adviser to President Woodrow Wilson.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Charles M. Thomas, Thomas Riley Marshall, Hoosier Statesman (Oxford, OH:1939), p. 153.

Sense, Housing

“A lot of political people, especially people on the left, have forgotten the importance of humor as an incredible weapon, and a vehicle through which to affect change.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

The Corporation (2004)
2004

People, Change

“Since 1914…I wait for the natural to return; for newspapers to report news with care for accuracy and grammar; for schools to teach and for pupils to study; for faces to be sane and intelligent, and even humorous; for American artists and poets and writers to be exuberant and optimistic…it is all gone with the music of Vienna and the gaiety of San Francisco. But I still see everything against that background, and really I see nothing funny anywhere. The Beatnik beard and the mini skirt and the topless waitress, they ARE funny, I know they are funny but they only make me tired, I don't laugh.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

letter to Roger MacBride (March 5, 1968).
reflecting her impressions of the world of 1968, at the age of 81.

School, Music, Intelligence, Nature

“(Television) Humor will never be the same. Sarcasm, irony, and cynicism will disappear. (Sylvia) Right. I'm having mine surgically removed. (Rita) Ma, cut it out!”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 97

“You need to laugh more. Life is filled with too many problems, to not laugh every day. … We need to have a sense of humor going into this because it's too tough without it.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Everyday Bravery" (25 March 2007)

Life, Problem, Sense

“I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic’s best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he’s doing is easy is an occupational hazard. Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming? In "serious" fiction (as in "serious" film) you can feel the weight of the material. You expect to see the effort and the strain of all that heavy lifting, and we reward the effort as much as the success. Comedy is often just as serious, and to ignore that seriousness is misguided, of course, but most writers with comic world views have accustomed themselves to being sold at a discount. Most of us wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Richard Russo (1949) American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter

Interview with Richard Russo, Failbetter.com, Volume II, Issue III, Summer/Fall 2001, September 24, 2009 http://www.failbetter.com/04/Russo.htm,

People, World, Way, Feeling

“(First woman)…Men lose their sense of humor as they get older…their brains shrink…So men will be getting grumpier, just as we're getting…(Second woman) Shorter.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 64

Men, Sense

“Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 22

Love, Time

“There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.”

J. William Fulbright (1905–1995) American politician

Source: The Arrogance of Power (1966), p. 245

Passion

“Books … hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.”

Isaac Asimov book Puzzles of the Black Widowers

Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), pp. 74-75
General sources

Life, Wisdom, People, Books

“When Boswell confessed to Johnson that he feared some things he was entering in his journal were too small, the latter advised him that nothing is too small for so small a creature as man. This is good evidence that Johnson had achieved what I referred to as perspective, which carries with it a necessary humility. And while some may be startled to hear Mencken called a modest man, I can infer nothing but a real condor and humility from those bombastic and ironical allusions to himself which comprise much of the humor of his writings. The tone he adopted was a rhetorical instrument; he had faced his limitations.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Life without prejudice,” p. 11.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Fear

“A young person today has a nanosecond attention span, so whatever you do in a humor has to be short. Younger people do not wait for anything that takes time to develop. We're going totally to one-liners. Telling a joke is risk taking. Younger people are more insecure and not willing to put themselves on the line, so a quick one-liner is much safer.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Warren St. John, The New York Times (May 28, 2005) "Wit's end: The death of the joke - Old-style wisecracks are passe in an age of decreasing attention spans, political correctness and the Internet", The Orlando Sentinel, p. E1.

People, Time, Waiting, Personality

“The theatre demanded of its members stamina, good digestion, the ability to adjust, and a strong sense of humor. There was no discomfort an actor didn’t learn to endure. To survive, we had to be horses and we were.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

Source: On Reflection (1968), Ch. 3

Sense, Strong, Learning, Horse

“The 1930s — a Golden Age for American humor, mainly because everything else was going so badly. The wisecrack was the basic American sentence because there were so many things that could not be said any other way.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"James Thurber: Men, Women, and Dogs" (1975), p. 228
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Age, Way

“Sing of the nature of women, and then the song shall be surely full of variety; old crotchets and most sweet closes. It shall be humorous, grave, fantastic, amorous, melancholy, sprightly, one in all, and all in one.”

John Marston The Malcontent

The Malcontent, Act III, sc. iv. (1603-04)

Women, Nature, Singing

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think. It is vital to mourn the victims of this government, but not at the expense of losing our sense of humor. Our ability to laugh directly coincides with our ability to fight. If we make fun of it, we can transcend it.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

Life, Feeling, Thinking, Sense

“I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor.”

Man Ray (1890–1976) American artist and photographer

As quoted in an interview "Man Ray: Photographer" published in Camera (1981) edited by Philippe Sers

Art, Success

“[something like] a badly constructed or repaired motor, or like that wonderful event of Tinguely's, where he made a huge contraption in the backyard of the Museum of Modern Art called 'Homage to New York', which was a machine that destroyed itself in various humorous ways. It's that breakdown system along with slippages that you can't predict I find most interesting, not because I want to make a point about society as being a broken down system or that all life is entropic — I don't, but rather that its process is unforeseeable.”

Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) American artist

In an interview with Robert C. Morgan, 1991; in the 'Journal of Contemporary Art, 4', no. 2, p. 56-69
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqsWqBX4wQ

Life, Art, Way

“As we liked to do as children, extracting from the soft forest floor the light chestnut trees only a few centimeters high at the base of which the chestnut continues to shine to the sun its clods of soil from the past, the chestnut conserving all of its presence and witnessing with its presence the power of green hands, of shadow, of airy white or pink pyramids of dances.... and of future chestnuts which, under new dust, would be discovered by the marveled sight of other children. It is in this perspective that the work of Arp, more than any other, should be situated. He found the most vital in himself in the secrets of this germinating life where the most minimal detail is of the greatest importance, where, on the other hand, the distinction between the elements becomes meaningless, adopting a peculiar under the rock humor permanently.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Quote from Anthologie de l'humour noir, André Breton; as cited in Arp, ed. Serge Fauchereau, Ediciones Poligrafa S. A., Barcelona, Spain, 1988
after 1930

Life, Children, Secret, Tree

“By the miracle of genius he created a masterpiece [Parzival], epic in scope, noble in purpose, humorous, humane, tender, and rational.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220) German knight and poet

Roger Sherman Loomis The Development of Arthurian Romance (New York: Dover, [1963] 2000) p. 67.
Criticism

“Journalism may not dare too much. It can be gently humorous and ironic, very lightly touched by idiosyncrasy, but it must not repel readers by digging too deeply. This is especially true of its approach to language: the conventions are not questioned. The questioning of linguistic conventions is one of the main duties of what we call literature.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

Literature, Question

“I would like to thank a world that never understood or accepted me, family and friends that never believed in me, and a God with one hell of a sense of humor. You have all made me what I am today. Let that weigh heavily on your consciences.”

David Draiman (1973) American singer and songwriter

sleeve notes, The Sickness (2000)

God, World, Family, Hell

“If humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Irish Humor, address in Hot Springs, Virginia (5 August 1908) http://www.authentichistory.com/1900s/1908election/19080805_William_H_Taft-Irish_Humor.html.

People

“Some of the [band's] work has a genuine feeling behind it. Some of it is probably just being funny for the sake of being funny. Obviously, there are elements to "Detachable [Penis]" about male identity that are there, but not really overtly there. For the person who wants to find it, it's there. I don't know. I don't think… I like to think I'm not obvious about the humor, and I'm not obvious about the feelings, either. There's a certain degree of subtlety to what I'm doing; even in very obvious things, there's something underneath that's interesting. I think [the band is] guilty of being clever at times, to the detriment of conveying something more important, more real, more honest. I'll cop to that. But I will also say that there's also stuff that does have meaning.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Interview by Stephen Thompson, The A.V. Club, November 11, 1998 ( link http://www.avclub.com/content/node/23128) Quotes from interviews

Feeling, Thinking, Time, Personality

“It is surprising what improper and indecent contentions these popular elections occasioned. I have oftener than once known half-a-dozen candidates all trying for a vacant parish, and preaching alternately, to give their electors an opportunity of determining what they liked best. Voice and action, as is remarked in a very humorous pamphlet respecting London lectureships, almost constantly carried it. … Preachers and ministers so elected, continuing still in some degree dependent on the people, continued also chiefly to cultivate those arts by which their favour had first been gained. Their sermons were light, flippant, and ordinary; but their manner of preaching was pleasing and popular.”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

"Reminiscences of an American Loyalist" (first published serially in "Notes and Queries", 1874-)

People, Art, Light, Dependency

“Public opinion* is the unseen product of education and practical experience. Education, in turn, is the function, in co-operation, of the family, the church and the school. If the family fails in its guiding influence and discipline and if the church fails in its religious instruction, then everything is left to the school, which is given an impossible burden to bear. It is just this situation which has arisen in the United States during the generation through which we are still passing. In overwhelming proportion, the family has become almost unconscious of its chief educational responsibility. In like manner, the church, fortunately with some noteworthy exceptions, has done the same. The heavy burden put upon the school has resulted in confused thinking, unwise plans of instruction and a loss of opportunity to lay the foundations of true education, the effects of which are becoming obvious to every one. Fundamental dis cipline, both personal and social, has pretty well disappeared, and, without that discipline which develops into self-discipline, education is impossible.
What are the American people going to do about it? If they do not correct these conditions, they are simply playing into the hands of the advocates of a totalitarian state, for that type of state is at least efficient, and it is astonishing to how many persons efficiency makes stronger appeal than liberty.
Then, too, we have many signs of an incapacity to understand and to interpret liberty, or to distinguish it from license. There is a limit to liberty, and liberty ends where license begins. It is very difficult for many persons to understand this fact or to grasp its implications. If we are to have freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of the press, why should we not be free to say and think and print whatever we like? The answer is that the limit between liberty and license must be observed if liberty itself is to last. To suppose, as many individuals and groups seem to do, that liberty of thought and liberty of speech* include liberty to agitate for the destruction of liberty itself, indicates on the part of such persons not only lack of common sense but lack of any sense o humor. If liberty is to remain, the barrier between liberty and license must be recognized and observed.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

People, Education, School, Family

“Technological consciousness takes itself dead seriously; it has no sense of humor. The fool can play no role in it, for there is no other realm that is can see beyond itself to which the fool can point. Consciousness in the throes of desire cannot tolerate laughter any more than criticism of laughter can be tolerated in a moment of sexual lust.”

Donald Phillip Verene (1937) philosopher

Source: Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge (1997), p. 169

Fools, Sense, Laughter, Dead

“…Another highlight of the festival was the performance of the Alchemy Trio in the Tempel Synagogue. That's a great cracovian cellist Dorota Imiełowska with accordion wizard Konrad Ligas and equally sensational bassist Roman Ślazyk. With musicians performed 16-year-old Łukasz Pawlikowski of which can confidently say that he has joined the ranks of the best Polish cellists. Jewish music they played (even in their own arrangement) enchanted, deeply touched and amused, because this music is not only an emotional but also full of humor. It was not just a concert - artists presented musical and theatrical spectacle. Excellent!”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

...Kolejnym wydarzeniem festiwalu był występ Alchemy Trio w Synagodze Tempel. To znakomita krakowska wiolonczelistka Dorota Imiełowska z czarodziejem akordeonu Konradem Ligasem i równie rewelacyjnym kontrabasistą Romanem Ślazykiem. Z muzykami wystapił 16-letni Łukasz Pawlikowski, o którym śmiało można powiedzieć, że już dołączył do grona najlepszych polskich wiolonczelistów. Muzyka żydowska, którą grali / również we własnej aranżacji/ zachwycała, wzruszała i bawiła, bo to muzyka nie tylko niezwykle emocjonalna, ale i pełna humoru. To był nie tylko koncert - artyści zaprezentowali spektakl muzyczno-teatralny. Rewelacja!
[Beata Penderecka, http://www.radiokrakow.pl/www/index.nsf/ID/BPEA-9AZLHZ, Cellos on Music in Old Cracow, Radio Kraków, 2013-28-08, Polish]
About

Music, Confidence

“Rabbi Raditz of Poland was a very short rabbi with a long beard, who was said to have inspired many pogroms with his sense of humor. One of his disciples asked, "Who did God like better, Moses or Abraham?"
"Abraham," the Zaddik said.
"But Moses led the Israelites to the Promised Land," said the disciple.
"All right, so Moses," the Zaddik answered.”

Woody Allen Without Feathers

"Hassidic Tales, with A Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar"
Without Feathers (1975)

God, Sense

“But I believe without any doubt at all that our greatest good fortune was that even in the most extreme difficulties we might lose our patience but never our sense of humor.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Living to Tell the Tale

Living to Tell the Tale (2002)

Sense, Patience

“If then the Courts of justice are to be considered as the bulwarks of a limited Constitution, against Legislative encroachments, this consideration will afford a strong argument for the permanent tenure of Judicial offices, since nothing will contribute so much as this to that independent spirit in the Judges, which must be essential to the faithful performance of so arduous a duty. This independence of the Judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals, from the effects of those ill humors, which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the People themselves, and which, though they speedily give place to better information, and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the mean time, to occasion dangerous innovations in the Government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Men, People, Faith, Justice

“For this dead Venice once taught us to be merchants, sailors and gentlemen; and this dying England taught the Americans all they have of speech, or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking birds.”

John Ruskin book Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera,, letter xlii, ( 1 June 1874 https://archive.org/stream/forsclavigera02ruskiala#page/204/mode/2up; quoted by William Archer in America To-Day). Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)

Bird, Learning, Dead

“That's the eureka moment, when suddenly you know something. Your hands sweat, you get into all kinds of symptoms of tremendous excitement. First of all, it's fear. Is it right? And it's incredible humor. 'How could it be any other way? It had to be that way! How could we have been so stupid, not to see this?”

Leon M. Lederman (1922–2018) American mathematician and physicist

June 27, 1992 Las Vegas, Nevada interview with Lederman. From Subatomic World Explorer, as noted on American Academy of Achievement web site http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/led0pro-1 (URL accessed on October 20, 2008)

Stupidity, Fear, Way

“Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of the victims. This isn't something that we take lightly. My comments were not meant to be ones that were taken lightly. What I was saying in a humorous vein is there are things happening that politicians need to pay attention to. It isn't everyday we have an earthquake in the United States.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Bachmann Plays Down Comments Linking Disasters and Deficits
The Caucus
The New York Times
2011-08-29
Sarah
Wheaton
Trip
Gabriel
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/bachmann-plays-down-comments-linking-disasters-and-deficits/
2011-09-03
asked about her "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians" remarks after her rally
2010s

Family, Heart

“Why, gentlemen, humor is one of the most valuable things in the human brain. It is the torch of the mind -- it sheds light. Humor is the readiest test of truth -- of the natural, of the sensible -- and when you take from a man all sense of humor, there will only be enough left to make a bigot.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Truth, Nature, Sense, Light

“There were thousands of moving messages. People sent money from their first month’s salary. Others said: This is my retirement payment—take it. This is the money for my next pair of shoes—take it. It was very important for me to see and hear those things. Normally you do not see the warmth, humor, care and generosity of the people while writing a blog. You just feel like you are walking in a dark tunnel and you feel alone.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011

Money, People, Shoe, Feeling

“In Abstract Expressionism the paintings symbolize the idea of ground-directedness as opposed to object-directedness. You put something down, react to it, put something else down, and the painting itself becomes a symbol of this. The difference is that rather than symbolize this ground-directedness I do an object-directed appearing thing. There is humor here. The work is still ground-directed; the fact that it's an eyebrow or an almost direct copy of something is unimportant. The ground-directedness is in the painter's mind and not immediately in apparent in the painting. Pop Art makes the statement that ground-directedness is not a quality that the painting has because of what it looks like…”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

Art, Idea, Appearance, Painting

“Humor starts like a wildfire, but then continues on, smoldering, smoldering for years.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Elizabeth Kastor (May 6, 1987) "The Jokers Take Heart - Pundits Ponder The Implications", The Washington Post, p. B1.

“Irony is jesting hidden behind gravity. Humor is gravity concealed behind the jest.”

John Weiss (1818–1879) United States clergyman and abolitionist

Wit, Humor, and Shakespeare: Twelve essays (1876), p. 63.

“This suiting my humor so well; I did thenceforth prosecute it, (at School and in the University) not as a formal Study, but as a pleasing Diversion, at spare hours; as books of Arithmetick or others Mathematical fel occasionally in my way. For I had none to direct me, what books to read, or what to seek, or in what Method to proceed. For Mathematicks, (at that time, with us) were scarce looked upon as Academical Studies, but rather Mechanical; as the business of Traders, Merchants, Seamen, Carpenters, Surveyors of Lands, or the like; and perhaps some Almanack-makers in London.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)

Books, School, Way, Mathematics

“I have always felt that humor was a wonderful vehicle to let us become connected with each other and ourselves… I try to portray the similarities and polarities in men and women, so that we can acknowledge and embrace our collective consciousness.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

As quoted in Variety magazine (2003)

Women, Men

“Was this the trick of it? Secrets so dire as to be unspeakable, thoughts so frightening as to make clear young voices mute, kicked out into the open with blunt ironic humor. And suddenly the dire didn't loom so darkly any more, and fear shrank, and anyone could say anything. And the unbearable seemed a little easier to lift.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)

Secret, Fear

“Corben's technique introduced the airbrush to comics. His sophisticated knowledge of how color is printed allowed him to get fantastic results. His work has maintained a sense of humor and spectacle in tales of barbarians, time travelers and Arabian nights.|Harvey Kurtzman”

Richard Corben (1940) American illustrator

[Kurtzman, Harvey, From Aargh! to Zap!, Prentice Hall Press, New York, 1991, 88, 978-0-13-363680-2]</ref>}}

Color, Travel, Knowledge, Sense

“I know that when I write, I'm writing for people who can handle high-school math, read at the Grade 12 level, and appreciate subtle humor as opposed to the toilet-bowl kind. I guess that makes the lower cutoff about 17-18 years old.”

Sean Punch (1967) Canadian editor

Steve Jackson Games Forums http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=536888&postcount=3 Answer to the question about which age group GURPS is aimed at

People, School, Reading

“That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.”

A. Whitney Brown (1952) American stand-up comedian

The Big Picture: An American Commentary (1991)

“A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Letter to the editor of Solidarity (1914-11-29)

Sense, Learning, Reading, Heart

“Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 160

Women, Men, Art, Music

“Many of my friends are under the impression that I write these humorous nothings in idle moments when the wearied brain is unable to perform the serious labours of the economist. My own experience is exactly the other way. The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far between. Personally, I would sooner have written "Alice in Wonderland" than the whole Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

Stephen Leacock book Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

Preface
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912)

Way, Reading, Personality

“Now as before it is the vulgar and the vital and the possibility of its transformation into the beautiful which continues to challenge and fascinate me… Or perhaps the subject of my art is like the definition of humor — emotional pain remembered in tranquillity.”

Grace Hartigan (1922–2008) American artist

Statement to World Artists : 1950-1980 as quoted n "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008)
Unsourced variant: I have found "my subject", it concerns that which is vital and vulgar in American life and the possibility of its transcendence into the beautiful.

Pain, Beauty, Art

“Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

"Warning to Jokers: Lay off the Prince"
The Illiterate Digest (1924)

Laughter

“The American child is a highly intelligent human being — characteristically sensitive, humorous, open-minded, eager to learn, and has a strong sense of excitement, energy, and healthy curiosity about the world in which he lives. Lucky indeed is the grown-up who manages to carry these same characteristics into adult life. It usually makes for a happy and successful individual.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Deeds Rather Than Words (1963)

Life, Happiness, World, Intelligence

“Confidence is at the root of so many attractive qualities - a sense of humor, a sense of style, a willingness to be who you are no matter what anyone else might think or say.”

Wentworth Miller (1972) British-born American actor

TheScene.com.au. 14 Jun 2007. Beanpole give Miller a Break. 27 Aug 2009. http://www.thescene.com.au/Fashion/Hype/BEANPOLES-GIVE-MILLER-A-BREAK/ TV.com Trivia http://www.tv.com/wentworth-miller/person/714/trivia.html on what qualities he finds attractive in a woman, at a Beanpole Press Conference in South Korea

Confidence, Thinking, Sense

“Still another nightmare he suffered at a dance given by the old Duchess Dowager of Somerset, a terrible vision in castanets, who seized him and forced him to perform a Highland fling before the assembled nobility and gentry, with the daughter of the Turkish Ambassador for partner. This might seem humorous to some, but to him the world turned to ashes.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

World, Suffering, Dance, Daughters

“Vampires, like virgins or priests, are things that women believe in. We must never fail to humor them in such matters.”

Brian McNaughton (1935–2004) US author

"Child of the Night" in 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories (1995) edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg

Women

“I have seen the very bottom of life: I was so afraid I wouldn’t be funny anymore. I just knew that I would lose my zaniness and my sense of humor. But I didn’t. Recovery turned out to be a wonderful thing.”

Ann Richards (1933–2006) American politician

Source: [Rick, Lyman, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/us/14richards.html?hp&ex=1158292800&en=22b04a312a2fd14f&ei=5094&partner=homepage, Ann Richards, Plain-Spoken Texas Governor Who Aided Minorities, Dies at 73, New York Times, September 14, 2006, 2006-09-16]

Life, Sense

“It's mandatory in this day and age to be considered to have a sense of humor and to demonstrate it. You're not paying me for a joke, You're paying me for the right joke.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Gail Russell Chaddock (December 9, 2005) "Backstory: Serious business of jokes in politics", Christian Science Monitor, p. 20.

Age, Sense

“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 (1906–1960) American actor and comedian

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.

People, Way, Time

“It must have been in his teens, perhaps rather early, that he and his elder brother John, with William Bell (afterwards of Wylie Hill, and a noted drover) and his brother, all met in the kiln at Eelief to play cards. The corn was dried then at home. There was a fire, therefore, aud perhaps it was both heat and light. The boys had played, perhaps, often enough for trifling stakes, and always parted in good humor. One night they came to some disagreement. My father spoke out what was in him about the folly, the sinfulness, of quarreling over a perhaps sinful amusement. The earnest mind persuaded other minds. They threw the cards into the fire, and (I think the younger Bell told my brother James) no one of the four ever touched a card again through life. My father certainly never hinted at such a game since I knew him. I cannot remember that I, at that age, had any such force of belief. Which of us can?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Life, Age, Home, Game

“The history of humorous writing discloses everchanging trends. Our fast-paced modern living is too impatient for the lengthy light verse and the leisurely essays of our forefathers.”

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

Humorous English, p266

History, Light

Quotes about humor page 3

Quotes about humor
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