Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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Laughter
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“If I was a locksmith I'd be fuckin' pimpin' that shit out. "Say, what's goin' on, man? Tell you what. I'll trade you a free key duplication (laughs)." That joke made me laugh before I could finish it. Which is good 'cause there's no ending.”
Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can read minds but, it's pointless cause I'm illiterate. I'd know what you were thinking, if I could read. (laugh) I tried to add on to that joke. I got busted. Thought I could squeeze a couple more laughs out of it but, it was not to be.”
Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What the country needs is a good big laugh. ... If someone could get off a good joke every ten days, I think our troubles would be over.”
Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement to Raymond Clapper (c. February 1931)
“To me, my approach is the most sensible. You're a comic. Therefore you want to get laughs. How do you get the most laughs in an hour? Tell short jokes. And don't say boom boom at the end. Just let the audience laugh then tell another joke. It's the shortest route to where you want to go.”
Jimmy Carr (born 1972) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Allan Brown (1 August 2004) "Benefits of being game for a laugh - Edinburgh Festival", The Sunday Times.
“I am not a comic, I have never told a joke...The comedian's promise is that he will go out there and make you laugh with him...My only promise is that I will try to entertain you as best I can....They say, 'Oh wow, Andy Kaufman, he's a really funny guy.' But I'm not trying to be funny. I just want to play with their heads.”
Andy Kaufman (1949–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The U.S. Army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good sergeants are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same.”
Bowe Bergdahl (born 1986) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a joke. Ade Coker was laughing; so was his wife, Yewande. But Papa did not laugh. Jaja and I turned and went back upstairs, silently.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ever since the cliché ‘Flying Saucer’ was coined, the greatest and most exciting mystery of our age has been automatically reduced to the level of a music hall joke. The comics of Vaudeville and the comedians of State and Science banded together, most successfully, to encourage humanity in its oldest and easiest method of escape—to laugh at what it does not understand.”
George Adamski (1891–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s better to get the last laugh than the joke.”
Ron English (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“First you laugh at a Jewish joke or quip. Then, against your will, you suddenly fall silent and thoughtful. And that is because Jews are so frequently jesting philosophers. A hard life has made them realists, realists without illusion.”
Nathan Ausubel (1898–1986) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Treasury of Jewish Humor (1951)
“I don't know a lot of cartoonists who laugh a lot. I think when we hear a joke we just get still like a dog who smells an animal. It becomes about isolating the part that's funny and unexpected and thinking more about that. You get spiraled into the nuances of what makes something funny and who thinks it's funny.”
Liana Finck (born 1986) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let me tell you, my young doctor friends, that a cheerful face and step, and neckcloth and kindly joke, a power of exciting, a setting a-going, a good laugh, are stock in our trade not to be despised. The hearty heart does good like a medicine.”
John Brown (physician, born 1810) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Horæ Subsecivæ: First Series, 3rd ed. (1861), Preface, p. xxxi
“What else is there to do but laugh and joke... how else can you bear up under the unbearable?”
Jim Thompson (writer) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1964)
“People want to laugh at themselves. But, who is going to start the joke?”
Thoko Ntshinga (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Laughter is the greatest music in the world and audiences come to my shows to escape the cares of life. They don't want to be embarrassed or insulted. They want to laugh and so do I - which is probably why it works.”
Ken Dodd (1927–2018) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Manchester Evening News, Dodd's Bolton bonus, Natalie Anglesey. (2008-04-28)
“April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears!”
William Watson (poet) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Song (April, April)", line 1, in The Hope of the World and Other Poems (London: John Lane, 1898), p. 41.
“Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful laughter of my devils, those cowardly ear-whisperers and poison-mixers. It was easy for them to laugh, since I had to do strange things.”
Carl Jung (1875–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Chinese novel was written primarily to amuse the common people. And when I say amuse I do not mean only to make them laugh, though laughter is also one of the aims of the Chinese novel. I mean amusement in the sense of absorbing and occupying the whole attention of the mind. I mean enlightening that mind by pictures of life and what that life means.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao, take it and practice it earnestly. Scholars of the middle class, when they hear of it, take it half earnestly. Scholars of the lowest class, when they hear of it, laugh at it. Without the laughter, there would be no Tao.”
Laozi (580–501 BC) said by 501 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The muffled thunder of dialogue comes through the walls, then a chorus of laughter. Then more thunder. Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes," I said, "it seems to me that a friend might not take such pleasure in making fun of me as you do." "Dear Odd! If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not, in fact, his friends. How else would one learn to avoid saying those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness.”
Dean Koontz (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in Farming: A Hand Book (1970)
“Icke: The best way of removing negativity is to laugh and be joyous, Terry, so I'm glad that there's been so much laughter in the audience tonight. Wogan: But they're laughing at you. They're not laughing with you. Icke: I don't care.”
David Icke (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Make portraits of people in familiar and typical positions, above all give their faces the same choice of expression one gives their bodies. Thus if laughter is typical for a person, make him laugh – there are, naturally, feelings that one cannot render…”
Edgar Degas (1834–1917) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Degas' Notebook of 1869; as quoted in Impressionism and Post Impressionism 1874 – 1904, 'Sources and Documents', Linda Nochlin, Englewood Cliffs, New Yersey, 1966, p. 62
“Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am what I am I was made this way When I want to laugh Yes I shriek with laughter I love those who love me It's my fault If they're not the same That I love everytime I am what I am I was made this way What more do you want What do you want from me”
Jacques Prévert (1900–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Make them laugh, make them cry, and back to laughter. What do people go to the theater for? An emotional exercise. And no preachment.”
Mary Pickford (1892–1979) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By ... (1968), p. 134
“Life deserves laughter, hence people laugh at it.”
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the leaves laugh 'cause they have what I have Reach from the best tree So he can see me And with your face With your face comes laughter And with your touch And with your touch comes joy.”
Happy Rhodes (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We laugh, but inept is our laughter; We should weep and weep sore, Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter Re-moulded no more!”
Al-Ma'arri (973–1057) said by 1057 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Three Great Abbasid Poets: Abu Nuwas, Al-Mutanabbi & Al-Ma'arri, Lives & Poems (2015) by Paul Smith
“People are always coming up to me and saying, 'I love you, love your work.' And then the next sentence is, 'I loved your brother.' John made people laugh, and laughter is a powerful thing,”
Jim Belushi (born 1954) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: Rick Kogan. "Belushis: Funny is in their bones: Jim, son Robert and stand-up Kyle Lane team up to create intimate Comedy Bar on Ontario Street," in: The Chicago Tribune, October 26, 2012.
“There's great value in being able to step back and laugh at yourself, at life and at attitudes. Laughter helps you put everything into perspective.”
Jim Henson (1936–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although the mutual laughter may seem six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, it is not. The Christian is profoundly mad merely by the standards of the world. To the world the wicked seem wise, but are mad in the sight of God. The Christian is touched by the Infinite and will not only have the last laugh at the end of time: even now he laughs more insanely than the worldlings.”
Michael Andrew Screech (1926–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as it is impossible to shed tears in Paradise, so to laugh in the world is also a matter of surprise. For just as Paradise is not a place for tears, similarly the world is no place for laughter.”
Al-Fudayl ibn 'Iyad (725–803) said by 803 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is something weird in our human psyche, maybe it’s a survival mechanism, to find laughter in the tragic. They say you have to laugh to stop yourself from crying.”
Doreen Baingana (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All joys do not cause laughter; great pleasures are serious: pleasures of love do not make us laugh.”
Voltaire (attributed) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“April, April, laugh thy girlish laughter, and the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears, April.”
Angus Wilson (misattributed) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sometimes misattributed to Wilson because quoted in No Laughing Matter (Viking, 1967, p. 75). Actually from "Song (April, April)" in William Watson, The Hope of the World and Other Poems (London: John Lane, 1898), p. 41…
“Anybody with a good sense of humor is one-up on their competition. We respond to somebody who has the ability to make us laugh. It's a bonding influence.”
Robert Orben (1928–2023) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kevin Merida (February 15, 1988) "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to The White House - The one-laugh-one-vote theory has candidates cracking wise", The Dallas Morning News, p. 1C.
“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) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lord Buckley, "H-Bomb" (comic monologue), 1960. Reported in Stephen Holden, It's Comedy! From Skit To Song To Satire (October 27, 1989) The New York Times.
“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) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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, .
“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 (born 1968) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Childishness? I think it's the equivalent of never losing your sense of humor. I mean, yes there's a certain something that you retain. It's the equivalent of not getting so stuffy that you can't laugh at others.”
Walt Disney (1901–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life — drama, pathos and humor.”
Walt Disney (1901–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course one worries about getting older - we're all fearful of death, let's not kid ourselves. I'm simply not panicking as my laugh lines grow deeper. Who wants a face with no history, no sense of humor?”
Cate Blanchett (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What a barbaric custom.” “Well, we could treat crime as a disease, like you Betans. You know what that’s like. At least we kill a man cleanly, all at once, instead of in bits over the years….I don’t know.” “How will they…do it?” “Beheading. It’s supposed to be almost painless.” “How do they know?” His laugh was totally without humor. “A very cogent question.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Comedy is a weird but very beautiful thing. Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad when you have a sense of humor.”
Mel Brooks (born 1926) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business (2021) , p. 451
“I fight with love, and I laugh with rage. You've gotta live light enough to see the humor, And long enough to see some change.”
Ani DiFranco (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do kind of aspire to do comedy that appeals to a wide range of audiences and doesn't divide people. I never want to do material that makes people laugh at the expense of making other people feel bad - not to say I'm not guilty of that at times. ... I try and make humor out of the really important issues of the day, like Hot Pockets and elevators and not wanting to get out of bed.”
Jim Gaffigan (born 1966) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stephanie Bouchard (February 15, 2007) "Pasty-faced and proud of it - Comedian Jim Gaffigan brings his 'Beyond the Pale Tour' to Merrill Auditorium", Portland Press Herald, Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc., D10.
“I try not to stand on a soapbox and scream. That's boring. You've got to be funny sometimes. All my humor comes from anger. Satire is terrific therapy. Making people laugh is a joy, but making them think about something serious is the ultimate reward.”
Carl Hiaasen (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ready to Give a Hoot", by Margaret Wappler; Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2006