Quotes about joke (629 quotes, page 6) | Quotes of famous people

“Bob Hope: Let's not do any jokes we didn't plan on, eh.”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

Hope

“[The Taoist priest] said to Chia Jui, "This mirror was made by the Goddess of Disillusionment and is designed to cure diseases resulting from impure thoughts and self-destructive habits. It is intended for youths such as you. But do not look into the right side. Use only the reverse side of the mirror. I shall be back for it in three days and congratulate you on your recovery." He went away, refusing to accept any money.
Chia Jui took the mirror and looked into the reverse side as the Taoist had directed. He threw it down in horror, for he saw a gruesome skeleton staring at him through its hollow eyes. He cursed the Taoist for playing such a crude joke upon him. Then he thought he would see what was on the right side. When he did so, he saw Phoenix standing there and beckoning to him. Chia Jui felt himself wafted into a mirror world, wherein he fulfilled his desire. He woke up from his trance and found the mirror lying wrong side up, revealing the horrible skeleton. He felt exhausted from the experience that the more deceptive side of the mirror gave him, but it was so delicious that he could not resist the temptation of looking into the right side again. Again he saw Phoenix beckoning to him and again he yielded to the temptation. This happened three or four times. When he was about to leave the mirror on his last visit, he was seized by two men and put in chains.
"Just a moment, officers," Chia Jui pleaded. "Let me take my mirror with me."”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

These were his last words.
Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 89–90

Men , Money , Youth , World

“[After having made an abortion joke] I know that can hit close to home for some people…. was anyone here aborted?… (mimicking child's voice:) 'I was found in a trash can!”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

Okay, well, that sorta counts...
It's Not Funny

People , Home

“Is feeling nothing the inevitable result of believing in nothing? …I thought it would be such a sick joke to have to remain alive for decades and not believe in or feel anything.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Life After God (1994)

Feeling

“When you see the name 'River Phoenix' everywhere; you gotta, like, joke about it.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Rolling Stone (1993)

“They're making a joke of our universe”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

Universe

“The scenery and costumes of 'The Wizard of Oz' were all made in New York — Mr. Mitchell was a New York favorite, but the author was undoubtedly a Chicagoan, and therefore a legitimate butt for the shafts of criticism. So the critics highly praised the Poppy scene, the Kansas cyclone, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, but declared the libretto was very bad and teemed with 'wild and woolly western puns and forced gags.' Now, all that I claim in the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' is the creation of the characters of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, the story of their search for brains and a heart, and the scenic effects of the Poppy Field and the cyclone. These were a part of my published fairy tale, as thousands of readers well know. I have published fifteen books of fairy tales, which may be found in all prominent public and school libraries, and they are entirely free, I believe, from the broad jokes the New York critics condemn in the extravaganza, and which, the New York people are now laughing over. In my original manuscript of the play were no 'gags' nor puns whatever. But Mr. Hamlin stated positively that no stage production could succeed without that accepted brand of humor, and as I knew I was wholly incompetent to write those 'comic paper side-splitters' I employed one of the foremost New York 'tinkerers' of plays to write into my manuscript these same jokes that are now declared 'wild and woolly' and 'smacking of Chicago humor.' If the New York critics only knew it, they are praising a Chicago author for the creation of the scenic effects and characters entirely new to the stage, and condemning a well-known New York dramatist for a brand of humor that is palpably peculiar to Puck and Judge. I am amused whenever a New York reviewer attacks the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' because it 'comes from Chicago.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Letter to "Music and the Drama", The Chicago Record-Herald (3 February 1903)
Letters and essays

People , Books , School , Search

“The great thing about being a comedian is that it kind of doesn't matter how you look. It's actually a disadvantage to be too good-looking. There's a Darwinian advantage to being funny. If you're a good-looking fella, you can't be bothered to make up jokes.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Simon Mills (November 14, 2005) "Top Table", The Daily Mail.

“A. S. O.. S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE. I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE [double underline]. IN THE NAME OF GOD, PLEASE REMAIN TO SAVE ME. I AM OUT COLLECTING BERRIES CLOSE BY AND SHALL RETURN THIS EVENING. THANK YOU, CHRIS McCANDLESS. AUGUST ?”

Christopher McCandless (1968–1992) American hiker and explorer

S. O. S. note http://www.christophermccandless.info/images/chris-mccandless_sos_lancastria.jpg

Death , God , Help

“Within those confining walls, teachers — a bunch of men all armed with the same information — gave the same lectures every year from the same notebooks and every year at the same point in the textbooks made the same jokes.”

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) Japanese author

"Cigarette" ("Ta- bako") story, quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 110.

Men , Teachers

“I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Church and Home, Vol. 1 (1964) by United Methodist Church, and Evangelical United Brethren Church, p. 21.
Attributed from posthumous publications

Personality

“There used to be an old joke in role-playing circles—it isn’t funny these days—that there were only a thousand real people in the UK—everybody else was a non-player character. Now it’s pretty much the reverse.”

Charles Stross book Halting State

Source: Halting State (2007), Chapter 33, “Elaine: Gentlemen and Players” (p. 272)

People

“This view of the case amused Esther for a time, but not for long — the matter was too serious for any treatment but a joke, and joking made it more serious still.”

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

Source: Esther: A Novel (1884), Ch. VII

Time

“James Joyce, in his novel Finnegans Wake, in 1939, punned on the word “Hindoo” (as the British used to spell it), joking that it came from the names of two Irishmen, Hin-nessy and Doo-ley: “This is the hindoo Shimar Shin between the dooley boy and the hinnessy.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Source: The Hindus: An Alternative History, p. 30.

Boy

“Is someone you know anorexic? A good joke would be to tell them that they're fat. They'll laugh because anorexic people aren't fat. HAHAH”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Pranks to try on people in the hospital! http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=jokes
The Best Page in the Universe

People

“I am often asked what it was like to be a woman clerking for Justice Scalia. “Much like being a man clerking for him” is my easy answer. Justice Scalia believed in one simple principle: That law came to the court as an is not an ought. Statutes, cases and the Constitution were to be read for what they said, not for what the judges wished they would say. Each of his opinions needed to conform to that principle and to be written clearly, forcefully and accurately. If you could help him with that, you were useful to him. If not, then not. When we were working, we sometimes joked that he could not even remember our names.”

Joan Larsen (1968) United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit

What I Learned From Justice Scalia https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/opinion/what-i-learned-from-justice-scalia.html?_r=0 (February 16, 2016)

Justice , Law , Reading , Help

“A branch of physics that I was working in for many years has lately become much less active. Many problems have been solved and others are so difficult that nobody knows what to do about them. This means that I do much less physics today than 15 years ago. By contrast, fractal tools have plenty to do. There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable. The hammer I crafted is the first effective tool for all kinds of roughness and nobody will deny that there is at last some roughness everywhere.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

A Theory of Roughness (2004)

Problem

“God could have entered the world in any place or family that God chose. God could have become human in a great ruling family in Judea. God could have entered into humanity in a wealthy Galilean family, perhaps as the child of a well-traveled and well-read merchant or scholar. More to the point, God could have chosen to be born into the Roman dynasty, in line to become emperor, to exercise and demonstrate maximum power.Instead, God chose to enter a family headed by a man with a simple profession, married to a woman who, from outward appearances, was no different than the other poor women in their joke of a town.”

James Martin (priest) (1960) Jesuit priest and writer

"How can you be Christian without caring for the poor?" (2017)

Women , God , World , Family

“Andrew Holland was prosecuted in the UK for possessing "extreme pornography", a term which appears to mean porn that judges and prosecutors consider shocking. He had received a video showing a tiger having sex with a woman, or at least apparently so.
He was found innocent because the video he received was a joke. I am glad he was not punished, but this law is nonetheless a threat to other people. If Mr Holland had had a serious video depicting a tiger having sex with a woman, he still would not deserve to go to prison. … I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors.
A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
Perhaps I am spared because this photo isn't "disgusting", but "disgusting" is a subjective matter; we must not imprison people merely because someone feels disgusted. I find the sight of wounds disgusting; fortunately surgeons do not. Maybe there is someone who considers it disgusting for a parrot to have sex with a human. Or for a dolphin or tiger to have sex with a human. So what? Others feel that all sex is disgusting. There are prejudiced people that want to ban all depiction of sex, and force all women to cover their faces. This law and the laws they want are the same in spirit.
Threatening people with death or injury is a very bad thing, but violence is no less bad for being nonsexual. Is it worse to shoot someone while stroking that person's genitals than to shoot someone from a few feet away? If I were going to be the victim, and I were invited to choose one or the other, I would choose whichever one gave me the best chance to escape.
Images of violence can be painful to see, but they are no better for being nonsexual. I saw images of gruesome bodily harm in the movie Pulp Fiction. I do not want to see anything like that again, sex or no sex. That is no reason to censor these works, and would still not be a reason even if most people reacted to them as I do.
Since the law doesn't care whether a real human was really threatened with harm, it is not really concerned about our safety from violence, any more than it is concerned with avoiding suffering for corpses or animals. It is only prejudice, taking a form that can ruin people's lives.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Extreme Pornography Law in the UK" (2010) http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html
2010s

Death , Women , Pain , People

“Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.”

Graham Greene book Our Man in Havana

Pt. 1, ch. 3, sct. 3
Our Man in Havana (1958)

Pain , Childhood

Lindsey Davis book The Silver Pigs

The Silver Pigs

Men

“I'm all for illegal immigration in this country except for the fact that they don't have to serve on jury duty. That's horseshit. It should be the other way around, they should serve exclusively on jury duty. Yeah, then, then, it would truly be a jury of one's own peers. [Some of the audience groans] It's not a stereotype if it's always true. Yeah, then it becomes law. That joke was called, "Latinos are criminals."”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Law , Way , Country

“I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices — it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath — someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts … just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown …. [being given] free rein [by director Christopher Nolan was] fun, because there are no real boundaries to what The Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

Interview remarks published in Empire, from interviews conducted in November 2007.
[Dan Jolin, Fear Has a Face, http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/covers/image.asp?id=24227&gallery=1365&caption=%23223%20%28January%202008%29, Empire, 223, January, 2008, 87–88, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, 2008-07-08]
[Dan Jolin, The Dark Knight, http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/covers/image.asp?id=27819&gallery=1365&caption=%23229+%28July+2008%29, Empire, 229, July, 2008, 92–100, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, 2008-08-18]
[Olly Richards, World Exclusive: The Joker Speaks: He's a Cold-blooded Mass-murdering Clown, http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?nid=21560, Empire, Web, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, November 28, 2007, 2008-08-18]

“The world is rapidly getting 'Ahmadinejadized,' if I'm allowed to make a joke. (20 November 2006)”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Source(s): http://emruz.info/ShowItem.aspx?ID=3004&p=1, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HL01Ak03.html
2006

World

“Perched on the southern tip of Africa, far from the centre of anything, many writers have lamented the cultural backwardness, the oppression of living in a divided city. Even as Cape Town evolves, grows more cosmopolitan, holds its first Picasso exhibition, becomes an international convention hub, acquires its very own fashion week … I still can’t help feeling the old unease. Is it the parochialism and cliquishness that outsiders comment on, joking that only third-generation Capetonians are really accepted? Is it the self-satisfied airheads basking at Camps Bay cafés, flicking golden curls and agonising over which cocktail to order? Is it the smug self-sufficiency that comes with having so much beauty on your doorstep that you don’t need to connect with your neighbour? Is it something to do with the schizophrenia of the city not being quite African, of holding onto Europe’s apron strings, of not knowing who or what it really is? Or is it the crime, that ubiquitous topic of so much conversation and so little action, which makes this one of the most violent cities on earth?”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

Cape Town Calling (2007)

Beauty , Feeling , Fashion , Help

“We can truly say that once the Leader of the Opposition had discovered what the Liberals and the SNP were going to do, she found the courage of their convictions. So, this evening, the Conservative Party, who want the Act repealed and oppose even devolution, will march through the Lobby with the SNP, who want independence for Scotland, and with the Liberals, who want to keep the Act. What a massive display of unsullied principle! The minority parties have walked into a trap. If they win, there will be a general election. I am told that the current joke going round the House is that it is the first time in recorded history that turkeys have been known to vote for an early Christmas.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1979/mar/28/her-majestys-government-opposition-motion in the House of Commons (28 March 1979). In the No confidence debate which brought his government down on 28 March 1979, Callaghan poked fun at the opposition parties and drew attention to their low showing in opinion polls. In the event the Scottish National Party lost 9 of its 11 seats
Prime Minister

History , Courage , Time , Christmas

“I do believe that on a whole, women are definitely smarter than men…I also believe that dogs are smarter than women. (woman in audience says “Not buying that”) No? That one, you don’t believe it? You believe that I didn’t do a series of tests? You are right to not believe it, because I’m going to go ahead and admit that I do not believe what I just said, it was what’s described as a 'joke.'”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

Um, I’ll be telling a bunch of them here tonight.
It's Not Funny

Women , Men , Dogs

“What is this thing between women, like men are a joke that women all told each other long ago but men never get it.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

Women , Men

“As everybody who met him noted, Krajisnik had only one long and extraordinarily brushy eyebrow, which spanned his forehead, creating what looked like a permanent dark cloud over his deep-set eyes. Although Krajisnik had not been indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal - and could therefore participate in Dayton - it was hard to distinguish his views from those of his close friend Radovan Karadzic. Milosevic had often said that Krajisnik was "more difficult" than Karadzic, but we had little basis on which to make an indipendent judgment. (…) He and Izetbegovic knew each other well, from lengthy meetings in the Bosnian Assembly before the war. Krajisnik owned a five-hectare farm on the edge of Sarajevo, in an area that would probably revet to the Muslims in any settlement, and we often made bitter jokes that the war was really over "Krajisnik's five hectares."”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 255

War

“… the huge church […] was thundering its gospel under her eyes.To have Niagara for a rival is no joke. Hazard spoke with no such authority; and Esther's next idea was one of wonder how, after listening here, any preacher could have the confidence to preach again. "What do they know about it?" she asked herself. "Which of them can tell a story like this, or a millionth part of it?"”

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

Source: Esther: A Novel (1884), Ch. IX

Confidence , Idea , Parting

“Serious drinkers are like serious eaters or serious noneaters. They are like serious drug-addicts. Their addiction holds a spell over them which acts as some powerful secret at the center of everything they do. The serious eater listens to others talking of diets, Weight Watchers, exercises; she hears them excitedly comparing pounds lost, pounds gained. She hears them encouraging each other, joking, consoling. She is not one of them. She knows the diets better than they do; she knows Weight Watchers is useless for her; she knows her life is on some Almighty Scale that she has to step on alone. She is in some covenant with food — a covenant which she probably does not understand, but which nevertheless exerts some magical, compelling power over her. She hates it; she loves it; she keeps her covenant silent.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Addiction to Perfection (1982), p. 11

Love , Life , Hate , Secret

“To James's intimates, however, these elaborate hesitancies, far from being an obstacle, were like a cobweb bridge flung from his mind to theirs, an invisible passage over which one knew that silver-footed ironies, veiled jokes, tiptoe malices, were stealing to explode a huge laugh at one's feet.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Source: A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934), Ch. 8

“I can't even really tell a joke. I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it and I feel guilty saying that, but it's the truth. I love my work but it ain't easy.”

Madeline Kahn (1942–1999) American actress

Michael Specter, (April 8, 1993) "At Home With: Madeline Kahn; Funny? Yes, but Someone's Got to Be" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE7D9153DF93BA35757C0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1, The New York Times, The New York Times Company

Love , Truth , Feeling

“There is a grim and ghastly humor -- the humor that is born of a pathetic philosophy -- which now and then strikes me in reading the bright and keen-witted work of our American paragraphers. It is a humor that may be crystallized by hunger and sorrow and tears. It is not found elsewhere as it is in America. It is out of the question in England, because an Englishman cannot poke fun at himself. He cannot joke about an empty flour-barrel. We can: especially if by doing it we may swap the joke for another barrel of flour. We can never be a nation of snobs so long as we are willing to poke fun at ourselves.”

Edgar Wilson Nye (1850–1896) American journalist, who later became widely known as a humorist

The Century magazine (1892)

Hunger , Question , Tear , Reading

“I don't want to be the joke of the world, and I don't want to be thought of as another Hitler swallowing up people.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

As quoted in "Kassem's Corner", Time (July 21, 1961).

People , World

“It always seems to someone outside the business that it is very difficult to write for a comedy show because it must be done quickly. Actually, it is much easier to write this humor than to do a joke or a show from scratch, because the audience knows the plot. Just mention what is going on and then deliver the punch line.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Lauren Keeport (February 3, 1998) "Scandal feeds maelstrom of Clinton jokes - 'Monicagate' a windfall for TV wits", The Washington Times, p. A2.

Business

“To quote D. A. Miller, the 'only necessary content of male heterosexuality is 'not a desire for women, but the negation of the desire for men.' As Miller continues, this necessary negation is such that 'straight men unabashedly need gay men, whome they forcibly recruit (as the object of their blows or, in better circles, their jokes) to enter into a polarization that exorcises the 'woman' in man through assigning it to a clas of man who may be considered to be no 'man' at all.”

Calvin Thomas (critical theorist) (1956) American academic

Source: Straight with a Twist (2000), p. 27.

Women , Men , Quotes

“Maslow's psychology, firmly based upon Freud and Watson, simply points out that the optimistic side of the picture has been overlooked; the deterministic laws of our 'lower nature' hold sway in their won field; but there are other laws. Man's freedom is a reality -- a reality that makes a difference to his physical, as well as his mental health. When Frankl's prisoners ceased to believe in the possibility of freedom, they grew sick and died. On the other hand, when they saw that Dachau had no chimney, standing out all night in the rain seemed no great hardship; they laughed and joked. The conclusion needs to be stated in letters ten feet high. In order to realise his possibilities, man must believe in an open future; he must have a vision of something worth doing. And this will not be possible until all the determinism and pessimism that we have inherited from the 19th century -- and which has infected every department of our culture, from poetry to atomic physics -- has been dismissed as fallacious and illogical. Twentieth century science, philosophy, politics, literature -- even music -- has been constructed upon a weltanschauung that leaves half of human nature out of account.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

p 219-220
New Pathways In Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972)

Health , Law , Music , Literature

“What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening—all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn't one big joke.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 49

Life , Future

“For every ten jokes, thou hast got a hundred enemies.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book I, Ch. 12.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

“The jokes of the gods are long in the telling.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 3, Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

God

“Geraldine Doogue: I'm intrigued by Anita saying she had to learn about systems. You had to learn about the sociology of systems and structural change, and that was obviously quite a journey for you.Anita Sarkeesian: Yeah, absolutely. I sort of joke about how it was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me, and also the most frustrating for everyone around me. Cause, like, when you start learning about systems, everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic, and you have to point it all out to everyone all the time. So there's a good year of my life where I was the most obnoxious person to be around. And then you settle into it, you start to understand, like, oh people have been living within these systems, and it was just sort of a liberating moment for me. You learn how to pick and choose your battles and that sort of thing.”

Anita Sarkeesian (1983) American blogger

"How to Be a Feminist" panel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzcs4ti_bdI?t=32m12s (March 8, 2015), All About Women Festival 2015, Sydney, Australia, @32:12

Life , People , Understanding , Learning

“I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection http://www.bartleby.com/122/48.html", lines 22-24
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Christ

“Doc says the Company set-up is just one big happy family, and the idea that it is a non-profit corporation is the biggest joke since women were invented.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Red Planet

Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 4, “Lowell Academy”, p. 44

Women , Family , Idea , Happiness

“It is a kind of vehicle, you know. It's a kind of making, spreading out ideas, that is what I think. It spreads out the idea. You must care for information and I personally try to make information available not only in a written way... I try also to work with images, with fantasy, with jokes, with humor. It accelerates the discussion of the problem of a new society.... so I work coming from the idea of art as the most important means to transform the society.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote from 'I put me on this train', interview with Art Papier, 1979; as cited in: Joseph Beuys in America: Energy Plan for the Western Man, Carin Kuoni; New York, 1993, p. 44
1970's

Art , Way , Idea , Problem

“The relation of the performance of music to sound is complex and ambiguous: this is what makes possible Mark Twain's joke that Wagner is better than he sounds.”

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

Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 1 Body and Mind

Music

“Check this joke out: If you wanna talk to me after the show I'll be… Fuckin'… Surprised. I'm gonna have to have some liner notes for that joke, like "During that joke, he points to the back." So people get the full experience. I'm gonna do a bunch of jokes that require actually seeing me. Then the CD will piss people off.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Mitch All Together (2003)

People

“At Yale, I initially continued research on the problems which I brought from Poland. Within a few months, I made five papers and then published them in the leading American and British magazines. They liked me, they came to the conclusion that Ptak is good and efficient. The head of the Department of Pathology was then Richard K. Gershon, would-be Nobel Prize winner, in the third generation, a Polish Jew. He died of lung cancer in 1983, at the age of fifty. We were close friends; I spent the last months of his life with him. Sometimes he joked to me – „You're too inteligent not to be Jewish.””

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Kobos, Andrzej (2009). Po drogach uczonych (in Polish). 4. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, pp. 383–398. ISBN 978-83-7676-021-6.

Life , Age , Problem

“I was sixteen when suddenly
I wasn't that little girl you used to see.
But your eyes still shined like pretty lights,
And our daddies used to joke about the two of us.
They never believed we'd really fall in love.
And our mamas smiled and rolled their eyes
And said oh my my my…”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Mary's Song (Oh My My My), written by Taylor Swift, Liz Rose, and Brian Maher.
Song lyrics, Taylor Swift (2006)

Love , Smile , Girl , Light

“Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 313

God

“Floating around the Internet these days, posted and e-mailed back and forth, are a number of writings attributed to me, and I want people to know they're not mine. Don't blame me.Some are essay-length, some are just short lists of one and two-line jokes, but if they're flyin' around the Internet, they're probably not mine. Occasionally, a couple of jokes on a long list might have come from me, but not often. And because most of this stuff is really lame, it's embarrassing to see my name on it.And that's the problem. I want people to know that I take care with my writing, and try to keep my standards high. But most of this "humor" on the Internet is just plain stupid. I guess hard-core fans who follow my stuff closely would be able to spot the fake stuff, because the tone of voice is so different. But a casual fan has no way of knowing, and it bothers me that some people might believe I'd actually be capable of writing some of this stuff.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Don't Blame Me https://web.archive.org/web/20120621054133/http://www.georgecarlin.com/home/dontblame.html
Internet, Georgecarlin.com (official website)

People , Stupidity , Way , Problem

“The pitch for the show, the real pitch, when Larry and I went to NBC in 1988, was we want to show how a comedian gets his material. The show about nothing was just a joke in an episode many years later”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Statement about the show Seinfeld, in "Jerry Seinfeld here. I will give you an answer." at Reddit (6 January 2014) https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ujvrg/jerry_seinfeld_here_i_will_give_you_an_answer/ceitvvp
Context: The pitch for the show, the real pitch, when Larry and I went to NBC in 1988, was we want to show how a comedian gets his material. The show about nothing was just a joke in an episode many years later, and Larry and I to this day are surprised that it caught on as a way that people describe the show, because to us it's the opposite of that.

“I guess the biggest joke of all was that story that got out about "Say it ain't so, Joe." Charley Owens of the Chicago Daily News was responsible for that, but there wasn't a bit of truth in it.”

Joe Jackson (1887–1951) American baseball player

This is the Truth! (1949)
Context: I guess the biggest joke of all was that story that got out about "Say it ain't so, Joe." Charley Owens of the Chicago Daily News was responsible for that, but there wasn't a bit of truth in it. It was supposed to have happened the day I was arrested in September of 1920, when I came out of the courtroom. There weren't any words passed between anybody except me and a deputy sheriff. When I came out of the building this deputy asked me where I was going, and I told him to the Southside. He asked me for a ride and we got in the car together and left. There was a big crowd hanging around the front of the building, but nobody else said anything to me. It just didn't happen, that's all. Charley Owens just made up a good story and wrote it. Oh, I would have said it ain't so, all right, just like I'm saying it now.

Truth

“You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter (21 June 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker
Context: You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Thinking

“You may be wondering if I'm joking or serious. I'm joking and serious.”

Bob Black book The Abolition of Work

The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.
You may be wondering if I'm joking or serious. I'm joking and serious. To be ludic is not to be ludicrous. Play doesn't have to be frivolous, although frivolity isn't triviality: very often we ought to take frivolity seriously. I'd like life to be a game — but a game with high stakes. I want to play for keeps.

“A joke is by definition politically incorrect — it assumes a butt, and a certain superiority in the teller. The culture won't put up with that for much longer.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Off the Page: Martin Amis" (2003)
Context: I'd like to be remembered as someone who kept the comic novel going for another generation or so. I fear the comic novel is in retreat. A joke is by definition politically incorrect — it assumes a butt, and a certain superiority in the teller. The culture won't put up with that for much longer.

“When very young, Hannali would sit on the black ground and chuckle till it was feared he would injure himself. Whatever came over him, prenatal witticism or ancestral joke, he seldom was able to hold his glee.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Okla Hannali (1972)
Context: When very young, Hannali would sit on the black ground and chuckle till it was feared he would injure himself. Whatever came over him, prenatal witticism or ancestral joke, he seldom was able to hold his glee. In all his life he never learned to hold it in.

Fear

“Truly religious people always make jokes about their religion; their faith is so strong that they can afford it. Much of the secret of life consists in knowing how to laugh, and also how to breathe”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 6
Context: Do you suppose that God takes himself seriously? I know a Zen master, Joshu Sasaki, who has let it be known that the best form of meditation is to stand up with your hands on your hips and roar with laughter for ten minutes every morning. I have heard of a sophisticated shaman-type fellow who used to cure ringworm on cows just by pointing at the scars and laughing. Truly religious people always make jokes about their religion; their faith is so strong that they can afford it. Much of the secret of life consists in knowing how to laugh, and also how to breathe.

Life , People , Secret , Faith

“Good-looking and amiable as he was, however, he did not strike one as remarkable. People usually told him the same joke two or three times.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)
Context: He was a young man of pleasant appearance. Of medium height and exceedingly pale, he was nevertheless strongly built and quick and easy in his ways. Save for his deafness in one ear, his physical health was perfect. Handsome as he was, he was given to long silences. So girls didn't know what to make of him. But men liked him. After a while they saw that he was easy and meant no harm. He was the sort whom classmates remember fondly; they liked to grab him around the neck with an elbow and cuff him around. Good-looking and amiable as he was, however, he did not strike one as remarkable. People usually told him the same joke two or three times.

People , Time

“I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now, you don't see it on TV, irony is on heavy rotation, the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke. I've tried them all out but I'll tell you this, outside this campus — and even inside it — idealism is under siege beset by materialism, narcissism and all the other isms of indifference.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

PENN Address (2004)
Context: I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now, you don't see it on TV, irony is on heavy rotation, the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke. I've tried them all out but I'll tell you this, outside this campus — and even inside it — idealism is under siege beset by materialism, narcissism and all the other isms of indifference. Baggism, Shaggism. Raggism. Notism, graduationism, chismism, I don't know. Where's John Lennon when you need him?

Indifference

“A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda (1876), Bk. 2, Ch. 15

Funny

“Friends picked up on the joke, and he was "the Good Doctor" for the rest of his life.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 6, Stranger In A Strange Land, p. 89
Context: To create a balance of power and pedigree in the house, Hunter sent five bucks off to an ad he'd seen in the back pages of a magazine and received his mail-order doctor-of-divinity degree. He began referring to himself as Dr. Thompson and punctuated remarks with his afterword: "I am, after all, a doctor." Friends picked up on the joke, and he was "the Good Doctor" for the rest of his life.

Life

“Churches also have their problems with a Jesus whose only economics are jokes.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

The Educational enterprise in the Light of the Gospel (13 November 1988).
Context: Churches also have their problems with a Jesus whose only economics are jokes. A savior undermines the foundations of any social doctrine of the Church. But that is what He does, whenever He is faced with money matters. According to Mark 12:13 there was a group of Herodians who wanted to catch Him in His own words. They ask "Must we pay tribute to Caesar?" You know His answer: "Give me a coin – tell me whose profile is on it!." Of course they answer "Caesar's."
The drachma is a weight of silver marked with Caesar's effigy.
A Roman coin was no impersonal silver dollar; there was none of that "trust in God" or adornment with a presidential portrait. A denarius was a piece of precious metal branded, as it were, like a heifer, with the sign of the personal owner. Not the Treasury, but Caesar coins and owns the currency. Only if this characteristic of Roman currency is understood, one grasps the analogy between the answer to the devil who tempted Him with power and to the Herodians who tempt Him with money. His response is clear: abandon all that which has been branded by Caesar; but then, enjoy the knowledge that everything, everything else is God's, and therefore is to be used by you.
The message is so simple: Jesus jokes about Caesar. He shrugs off his control. And not only at that one instance… Remember the occasion at the Lake of Capharnaum, when Peter is asked to pay a twopenny tax. Jesus sends him to throw a line into the lake and pick the coin he needs from the mouth of the first fish that bites. Oriental stories up to the time of Thousand Nights and One Night are full of beggars who catch the fish that has swallowed a piece of gold. His gesture is that of a clown; it shows that this miracle is not meant to prove him omnipotent but indifferent to matters of money. Who wants power submits to the Devil and who wants denarri submits to the Caesar.

Problem

“In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience. She says,
:Open your mouth and shut your eyes
:And I'll give you something to make you wise;
and thereupon she keeps her promise, and seems to take her pay in the fun of tormenting us.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 2 : Struggle, CP 5.51
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Teachers , Reading

“You get somebody to explain the Trinity to you, they'll say "Well God, he's God, and Jesus is God as well, and the Holy Spirit is… [mumbles indistinctly]". "What?" "He's the fecund spirit of the Lord who impregnates Mary, then gets a bit up himself and is reduced to light clerical duties?" Let's examine that in joke form: three male divine natures go into a cosmic essence, giving and receiving love, but not in a gay bishop way, to which the whole of Islam goes "Wha?"; Hinduism: "Nah!"; or Buddhism: "Ssh!".”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Part Troll (2004)

Love , God , Way , Nature

“What good are the passions? For sooner or later their sweet sickness ends when reason speaks up;
And life, if surveyed with cold-blooded regard is stupid and empty — a joke.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"Lonely and Sad" (1840)
Poems

Life , Stupidity , Passion

“Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), p. 97
Context: You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

“The place itself, and ne'er a good word spoke of it,
You shiver when you even make a joke of it.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

On Hellpepper Planet, Ch. 7
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: p>The place itself, and ne'er a good word spoke of it,
You shiver when you even make a joke of it.Though some go cocky, gaily in hand-basket there,
The most fare sadly in a clammy casket there…Undying pain and gaping loss, no doubt of it.
A wide way leading in and no way out of it! But none have told the blackest horror shrouded there —
Tall teeming terror‚ but it sure is crowded there.</p

“Even if you’re not particularly religious, then you have to admit that religion surrounds us even in the most mundane aspects of our lives. I was trying to rent a car, and the bloke said to me: "You’re not covered for acts of God."
I said: "What do you mean by that?", he said: [waving arms] "Woooooh!"
I said, "Can you be a bit more specific?", and he went, [vaguely gesticulating] "Eh… ooooh… uh?"
I said, "I’m intrigued because you said 'acts of God', and not gods, or spirits, or jinn, or nymphs, but 'God', a capital God, a monotheistic religion, maybe a Judeo-Christian religion, which would imply a belief system, which would perhaps lead to free-will and determinism, so logically anything that man does directly or indirectly is in fact an act of God, so I’m not covered for anything!"
He said, "I’ll get the manager."
Then I said, "What do you mean by an act of God? What do you mean by that?"
He said, "I dunno, a plague of locusts or something."
"'A plague of locusts'? They swarm round the vehicle, rip the wing mirrors off, and I’m liable for a fifty pound excess?”
And he said, "No, like, rain or something."
I said, "Yeah, but how much rain? It’s drizzling a bit now, is that an act of God? At what point does the rain reach a certain level beyond which it takes on the more apocalyptic mantle of the water-based punishment of the Lord!?"
And he said, [despairing] "I just work Saturdays."
I said "You can’t answer me, can you? Your policy is riddled with theological inconsistency. You disgust me. You twist and turn. You remind me of the Siberian hunting spider, which adopts a highly-convincing limp in three of its eight legs in order to attract its main prey, the so-called Samaritan squirrel, which takes pity on the spider, and then the spider jumps on it and injects the paralysing venom, and the squirrel remains bafflingly philosophical about the whole thing. Not to be confused with the Ukrainian hunting spider, which actually has got a limp and is, as such, completely harmless, and a little bit bitter about the whole thing: [imitating spider] 'Siberian spider have good leg, have nice day, can catch fly, can make web, can catch fly for family, I can do nothing, my leg, it drags behind! It drags! [audience laughs] And you laugh! You make fun! Oh, ha, big joke! I am failure! I am freak! [singing] But in my dreams I can fly, I'm the greatest spider in town. But I wake and it's cold, and I feel so old, and my legs are dragging me down.'"
And then the manager came out, and he said: “Stop all that spider singing."”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Pointed to a sign on the wall: a spider with a line through it. "Oh, fair enough."
He said "I can offer you an upgrade, fifty quid, and we can include in it policies set in place by the Marquis de Laplace, the French scientist who declared that all things in the universe are predetermined, so you would be covered even if time-travel was invented during the period of rental.”
I said, "Nah, probably leave it."
Part Troll (2004)

God , Family , Religion , Dreams

“Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

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.

“And the joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure only saw a bit of the game, and I who sat in my chambers saw it all and pulled the strings. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' you know.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Preface
The Power-House (1916)
Context: I once played the chief part in a rather exciting business without ever once budging from London. And the joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure only saw a bit of the game, and I who sat in my chambers saw it all and pulled the strings. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' you know.

Game , Waiting

“Housekeeping ain't no joke.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women (1868), Ch. 11 : Experiments

“When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It's the with-it view as everyone knows.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (16) "Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere: Calypso (stanzas 2, 5, and 7) 
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: Watching their sets in a kind of trance
were people in Mexico, people in France.
They don't chase Jones but the dreams are the same —
Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, that's the right name!
Herr und Frau Uberall or les Partout,
A gadget on the set makes them look like you. When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It's the with-it view as everyone knows.
It may be a rumor or it may be true
But a gadget on the set has it said by you! "What do you think about Yatakang?"
"I think the same as the Everywhere gang."
"What do you think of Beninia then?"
"The Everywheres will tell me but I don't know when."
Whatever my country and whatever my name
A gadget on the set makes me think the same.

Thinking

“People who are afraid of ideas whitewash Reagan like they whitewash Jesus. Sorry to break it to you, but the Reagan era did not consist of eight years of Reagan joking about his naps.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Ho Ho Ho, Merry Imus!" (11 April 2007) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=178.
2007
Context: One more item for the delusional Miss Grundys still obtusely citing Reagan as their model of "niceness": As governor of California, Reagan gave student protesters at Berkeley the finger. Remember that next time you ask yourself: "What would Reagan do?"
People who are afraid of ideas whitewash Reagan like they whitewash Jesus. Sorry to break it to you, but the Reagan era did not consist of eight years of Reagan joking about his naps.

People , Idea

“A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

"Getting into Print", first published in 1903 in The Editor magazine
Context: Fiction pays best of all and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold. A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration. Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible - if you care to see in print things you write. (In this connection don't do as I do, but do as I say.) Humour is the hardest to write, easiest to sell, and best rewarded... Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

“The town is divided into various groups, which form so many little states, each with its own laws and customs, its jargon and its jokes.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Aphorism 4
Les Caractères (1688), De la ville
Context: The town is divided into various groups, which form so many little states, each with its own laws and customs, its jargon and its jokes. While the association holds and the fashion lasts, they admit nothing well said or well done except by one of themselves, and they are incapable of appeciating anything from another source, to the point of despising those who are not initiated into their mysteries.

Law

“In life, we are given the choice between three paths: utopia, illusion or nonsense. The funny thing is, none of us get the joke.”

Gianni Sarcone (1962) Italian author, artist, designer, and researcher in visual perception and cognitive psychology

ESOF (2010).
Context: Life, like art, is purposeless and unpredictable. That’s what makes it beautiful and rare! In life, we are given the choice between three paths: utopia, illusion or nonsense. The funny thing is, none of us get the joke.

Life

“The message is so simple: Jesus jokes about Caesar. He shrugs off his control.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

The Educational enterprise in the Light of the Gospel (13 November 1988).
Context: Churches also have their problems with a Jesus whose only economics are jokes. A savior undermines the foundations of any social doctrine of the Church. But that is what He does, whenever He is faced with money matters. According to Mark 12:13 there was a group of Herodians who wanted to catch Him in His own words. They ask "Must we pay tribute to Caesar?" You know His answer: "Give me a coin – tell me whose profile is on it!." Of course they answer "Caesar's."
The drachma is a weight of silver marked with Caesar's effigy.
A Roman coin was no impersonal silver dollar; there was none of that "trust in God" or adornment with a presidential portrait. A denarius was a piece of precious metal branded, as it were, like a heifer, with the sign of the personal owner. Not the Treasury, but Caesar coins and owns the currency. Only if this characteristic of Roman currency is understood, one grasps the analogy between the answer to the devil who tempted Him with power and to the Herodians who tempt Him with money. His response is clear: abandon all that which has been branded by Caesar; but then, enjoy the knowledge that everything, everything else is God's, and therefore is to be used by you.
The message is so simple: Jesus jokes about Caesar. He shrugs off his control. And not only at that one instance… Remember the occasion at the Lake of Capharnaum, when Peter is asked to pay a twopenny tax. Jesus sends him to throw a line into the lake and pick the coin he needs from the mouth of the first fish that bites. Oriental stories up to the time of Thousand Nights and One Night are full of beggars who catch the fish that has swallowed a piece of gold. His gesture is that of a clown; it shows that this miracle is not meant to prove him omnipotent but indifferent to matters of money. Who wants power submits to the Devil and who wants denarri submits to the Caesar.

“A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable.”

G. K. Chesterton book What I Saw in America

"Fads and Public Opinion" http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/10/
What I Saw in America (1922)
Context: A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable. I was a foreigner in America; and I can truly claim that the sense of my own laughable position never left me. But when the native and the foreigner have finished with seeing the fun of each other in things that are meant to be serious, they both approach the far more delicate and dangerous ground of things that are meant to be funny. The sense of humour is generally very national; perhaps that is why the internationalists are so careful to purge themselves of it. I had occasion during the war to consider the rights and wrongs of certain differences alleged to have arisen between the English and American soldiers at the front. And, rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that they arose from the failure to understand when a foreigner is serious and when he is humorous. And it is in the very nature of the best sort of joke to be the worst sort of insult if it is not taken as a joke.

“They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

What I Believe (1938)
Context: I believe in aristocracy, though — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

“We claim no respectability. There's no status I would not surrender for a joke.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Rolling Stone interview (31 October 2006)
Context: We claim no respectability. There's no status I would not surrender for a joke. So we don't have to defend anything.

“If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

"How to Love God" (12 September 1954).
General sources
Context: When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other.
It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything, God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.

God

“I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one. ”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

“Humor, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle. Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can’t afford to be too frivolous. (And there just aren’t that many episiotomy jokes, even in the male repertoire.) I am certain that this is also partly why, in all cultures, it is females who are the rank-and-file mainstay of religion, which in turn is the official enemy of all humor. One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman’s universe is left in ashes and ruin. Try being funny about that, if you like. Oscar Wilde was the only person ever to make a decent joke about the death of an infant, and that infant was fictional, and Wilde was (although twice a father) a queer. And because fear is the mother of superstition, and because they are partly ruled in any case by the moon and the tides, women also fall more heavily for dreams, for supposedly significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries, for romantic love, crystals and stones, lockets and relics, and other things that men know are fit mainly for mockery and limericks. Good grief! Is there anything less funny than hearing a woman relate a dream she’s just had?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

“And then Quentin was there somehow. And so were you, in a strange sort of way. And it was all so peaceful.” Peaceful?
"Why Women Aren’t Funny" https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/, Vanity Fair, (January 1, 2007).
2000s, 2007

Birthday , Religion , Making love , Personality

“Despite evidence to the contrary (and there is enough of it to fill many volumes), there is still a widespread notion...that flying saucers are some kind of American joke..that the mystery has already been cleared up...and that there is nothing more to worry about.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Flying Saucers Have Landed

Flying

“I love people who have a good sense of humor, tell a good story, tell a good joke.”

Jason Statham (1967) English actor, film producer, martial artist and former diver

Sense , Love , Making love , People

“I’m bringing it up because it’s just an arbitrary example of a cycle that it seems like our culture repeats about once a week: somebody makes a joke, some people are offended by the joke, and other people are indignant about the fact that those people are offended. The cycle usually gets framed as a battle in a culture war that’s supposedly going on between generation snowflake, easily triggered, humorless PC cucks, and badass, edgy, nothing-off-limits free-speech truth tellers. Now if this really is a culture war between two sides, then I am a double agent, because I’m a generation snowflake PC cuck who loves dank edgy memes, and I’ve found myself on both sides of this type of conflict many, many times. So on the one hand, when I see the internet roasting a comedian for some shitty trans joke my inner snowflake wants to watch the bastard burn. But my inner edgelady knows how it feels to be dragged across Twitter over a joke. And as someone who basically writes jokes about controversial topics for a living, I appreciate how difficult it is to maintain the mildly sadomasochistic character of comedy while also keeping your moral compass from getting too jittery.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints, Feminism Did Not Destroy Atheism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfH9QaEcqY (2016), The Darkness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtj7LDYaufM (2019)

Time , War , People , Truth

“The thing about writing in America—and I just recently understood this—is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it’s the wrong thing. It’s not a profession. A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can’t do anything else, and then you have another job. I’m always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something. If you just sit there, and you’re a writer, you’re bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals. Writing is not a profession. It’s a calling. It’s almost holy…”

Jamaica Kincaid (1949) Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

On her views of writing in “Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?” https://www.guernicamag.com/does-truth-have-a-tone/ in Guernica (2013 Jun 17)

School , Law , Success

“At first the child is amused by his anus and feces, and gaily inserts his finger into the orifice, smelling it, smearing feces on the walls, playing games of touching objects with his anus, and the like. This is a universal form of play that does the serious work of all play: it reflects the discovery and exercise of natural bodily functions; it masters an area of strangeness; it establishes power and control over the deterministic laws of the natural world; and it does all this with symbols and fancy. With anal play the child is already becoming a philosopher of the human condition. But like all philosophers he is still bound by it, and his main task in life becomes the denial of what the anus represents: that in fact, he is nothing but body so far as nature is concerned. Nature’s values are bodily values, human values are mental values, and though they take the loftiest flights they are built upon excrement, impossible without it, always brought back to it. As Montaigne put it, on the highest throne in the world man sits on his arse. Usually this epigram makes people laugh because it seems to reclaim the world from artificial pride and snobbery and to bring things back to egalitarian values. But if we push the observation even further and say men sit not only on their arse, but over a warm and fuming pile of their own excrement—the joke is no longer funny. The tragedy of man’s dualism, his ludicrous situation, becomes too real. The anus and its incomprehensible, repulsive product represents not only physical determinism and boundness, but the fate as well of all that is physical: decay and death.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Law , Fate , Making love , Game

“The intellectual hierarchy has been demolished. It’s a sad commentary that in the world’s largest democracy, writers’ protest has become a subject of jokes. The power-hungry artists, writers, academics, and media-persons in India waste a huge amount of time making political statements to hide behind their lack of intellectual stands. Michel Houellebecq wrote Submission, a strong political statement; he didn’t get press coverage for returning some award. The lustre is gone from our intellectual discourse. Secularism has lost its ideological currency. Artists, writers, activists are all suspect. Media czars have lost their access to the corridors of power and to people’s hearts. It’s the overclass’ space that has been taken over by the underclass. Their discomfort is with the new order where the others are also heard. Hence, the feeling of shrinking space. They are intolerant of this new phenomenon – the emergence of the underclass. They try to devalue this new, empowered underclass by associating it with Modi and, therefore, Hindutva, and that’s a grave mistake. The universe that was full of their voice has expanded to accommodate this new voice. This is what they call an attack on FoE and growing intolerance.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Democracy , Time , Strong , Personality

“The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet...”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
1910s

Truth , Law , Housing , Swine

“An array of puns, asides and (sometimes off-key) jokes makes the book more bulky and somewhat anecdotal, but also entertaining to read.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Shome, Shubhodeep (2012), "Review of The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger", South Asia Research, 32: 77–79
The Hindus' (2009), About her book 'The Hindus

Books , Reading , Making love

“Necessity makes a joke of civilization.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 124
General sources

Making love

“What is that joke? What is that? What IS that? What is Hitler? What is Stalin? What is Mao? What is ALL this stuff? What is Venezuela?”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"What Is Hitler? What Is Stalin? What Is Mao? What is Venezuela?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tjAGGChWA, The Alex Jones Show, December 2017.
2017

“Yes, maybe it’s just one colossal big joke with no point to it.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Lazarus stood up and stretched and scratched his ribs. “But I can tell you this, Andy, whatever the answers are, here’s one monkey that’s going to keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.”
Methuselah’s Children (p. 667; closing words)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

“That was when I started telling Polish jokes. Actually, Maz robbed me. If I had hit that home run, I would have made a lot more out of it than Maz did. He never made much effort to capitalize on it. Can you imagine what that homer would be worth in endorsements today?”

Dick Stuart (1932–2002) American baseball player

On the walk-off home run—hit with pinch hitter Stuart on-deck—that ended the 1960 World Series; as quoted in "A Sad Story: Dick Stuart's Bat Was Solid; So Was His Glove"

Home , Imagination , Effort

“Frankie Boyle: If you get offended by any jokes, by the way, feel free to Tweet your outrage on a mobile phone made by a ten year old in China.”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Live at the Apollo 10/12/2014

Way , Feeling