Comedy & Satire Quotes

Funny is an attitude.

Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Much of the best humor is found in the frequently tragic reality of human experience.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

Humor is reason gone mad.

Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times.

The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.

Comedy is funny when it comes from truth, and that's always the rule of them. It's about how far you can push that boundary.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.

Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.

Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.

I can't not put humor in a book.

What other people call dark and despairing, I call funny.

Actually being funny is mostly telling the truth about things.

Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.

Politics is developing more comedians than radio ever did.

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.

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

G.I. humor is similar to cop humor.

There's humor in everything. There's gotta be humor in everything.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Humor can be an incredible lacerating and effective weapon. And that is the way I use it.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

It's both funny and sad which seem to me to be the two basic ingredients of good comedy.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

Humor helps ease the tension of race and the differences in society. If there wasn't comedy I don't know if Obama could have ever become president.

Humor - I see it as a survival skill.

One of the interesting things about comedy is it's tension release, and nothing creates tension faster than anger.

A farce, or slapstick humor, does well universally.

I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early '70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire.

And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.

You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.

Hard comedy goes for the fences. It's also what you might call take-a-risk comedy because if you don't hit a home run, you might strike out. It's either a belly laugh or it's no go and no show.

Self-parody is the first portent of age.