Quotes about in-joke
A collection of quotes on the topic of in-joke, joke, likeness, doing.
Quotes about in-joke

Isn't that what it says?
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.”
As quoted in "A View from the Asylum" in Philosophical Investigations from the Sanctity of the Press (2004), by Henry Dribble, p. 87
Attributed from posthumous publications

“A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.”

“Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution”
Source: An Age Like This: 1920-1940

To his officers on German Police Day (February, 1941), as quoted in Gestapo : Instrument of Tyranny (1956) by Edward Crankshaw, p. 103
Kaufman explaining his act

To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

“Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.”
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 7

Tract 83 http://anglicanhistory.org/tracts/tract83.html (29 June 1838).

Biographical memoir: "John von Neumann (1903 - 1957)" in Year book of the American Philosophical Society (1958); later in Symmetries and Reflections : Scientific Essays of Eugene P. Wigner (1967), p. 261
Context: A deep sense of humor and an unusual ability for telling stories and jokes endeared Johnny even to casual acquaintances. He could be blunt when necessary, but was never pompous. A mind of von Neumann's inexorable logic had to understand and accept much that most of us do not want to accept and do not even wish to understand. This fact colored many of von Neumann's moral judgments. "It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature." Only scientific intellectual dishonesty and misappropriation of scientific results could rouse his indignation and ire — but these did — and did almost equally whether he himself, or someone else, was wronged.

"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Context: The thing that drove Dickens forward into a form of art for which he was not really suited, and at the same time caused us to remember him, was simply the fact that he was a moralist, the consciousness of ‘having something to say’. He is always preaching a sermon, and that is the final secret of his inventiveness. For you can only create if you can care. Types like Squeers and Micawber could not have been produced by a hack writer looking for something to be funny about. A joke worth laughing at always has an idea behind it, and usually a subversive idea. Dickens is able to go on being funny because he is in revolt against authority, and authority is always there to be laughed at.


“All jokes about religion cause offence, so it's pointless apologising for them.”
As quoted in a letter to The Times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times (2018)

“I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

"What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?" http://www.mtwain.com/What_Paul_Bourget_Thinks_of_Us/0.html, in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897)
“If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.”

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
"Forgive, O Lord," In the Clearing (1962)
First published in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin (12 November 1960), p. 157 http://books.google.com/books?id=9J_lAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Forgive+O+Lord+my+little+jokes+on+Thee+And+I'll+forgive+Thy+great+big+one+on+me%22&pg=PA157#v=onepage
1960s
Variant: Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

“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)

I'm telling you: sing.
Source: Sofia Rotaru's sister, also singer, back-stage vocal in 1993
Source: a Russian term used to describe a style of man's haircut that features a lock of hair sprouting from the top or the front of an otherwise closely shaven head. The word is also commonly used mostly by Russians as a derogatory name for Ukrainians, as it was a common haircut of Ukrainian Cossacks. [Sofia Rotaru is Ukrainian national, although of Moldavian origin considering herself also Russian]

"The Defence Remains Open!" (April 1921), published in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 54
Non-Fiction

“Death is an old joke, but it comes like new to everyone.”
Source: Father and Sons (1862), Ch. 27.

Reading Rockets interview http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/stine/transcript hi you know it’s me cardi B

“Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.”
Source: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Ch. 27

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 4

http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=m-ch-vid&v=l0dLyjo2lNA
Quotes On Films

Interview Public Radio International (October 2006)
Various interviews

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume III: Solace for the Heart in Difficult Times (Hari-Nama Press, 2000), Chapter 8 - How To Strengthen Ourselves

"The State of the Theatre" an interview by Henry Brandon in Harpers 221 (November 1960)

“Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.”
As quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
Some things are so serious that one can only joke about them.
Variant without any citation as to author in Denial is not a river in Egypt (1998) by Sandi Bachom, p. 85.

WHAT?! "Check it out, eh, it's the Fat and the Furious!"
Hot & Fluffy (2007)

Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous" http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/09/16vonnegut1.html, McSweeny's (September 2002)
Various interviews

“The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.”
Die Verschwörung des Fiesco (The Conspiracy of Fiesco), Act I, sc. vii (1783)

Frazier Moore, Associated Press (August 22, 2002) "Perry pondering life after 'Friends'", Deseret Morning News, Deseret News Publishing Co., p. C04.

Letter to James F. Morton (10 February 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Letter to James F. Morton (6 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 207
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.
Independent on Sunday obituary http://web.archive.org/web/20100522031727/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bob-monkhouse-jokewriter-to-the-stars-and-the-longreigning-king-of-primetime-comedy-dies-at-75-578058.html

"Palm Sunday", a sermon delivered at St. Clement's Church, New York City (ndg), originally published in The Nation as "Hypocrites You Always Have With You" (ndg)
Palm Sunday (1981)
Context: Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

“It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.”
Letter as quoted in "Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life" (2003) written by Caroline Moorehead.
Context: War happens to people, one by one. That is really all I have to say and it seems to me I have been saying it forever. Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

“I don't claim that this is correct, or that God exists, but it is just sort of half a joke.”
Paul Erdős - SF means Supreme Fascist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qeWugmiGt4
Context: SF means Supreme Fascist — this would show that God is bad. I don't claim that this is correct, or that God exists, but it is just sort of half a joke. … As a joke I said, "What is the purpose of Life?" "Proof and conjecture, and keep the SF's score low."
Now, the game with the SF is defined as follows:
If you do something bad the SF gets at least two points.
If you don't do something good which you could have done, the SF gets at least one point.
And if nothing — if you are okay, then no one gets any point.
And the aim is to keep the SF's score low.

http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes
[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/1350738078453755909]
Tweets by year, 2021

Charlie Rose interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-LCdcdShdY, 2016
“It was one of God's jokes that such a dumb mind had been put in such an eloquent body.”
Source: Dead Until Dark

“when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.”
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

“When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke”

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 12

“If I made a joke about just dropping in, would you write me off as a cliche?”
Jace to Clary, pg. 338
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)