Laughing quotes
3.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside laughing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh."
"At first the cartoon medium was just a novelty, but it never really began to hit until we had more than tricks... until we developed personalities. We had to get beyond getting a laugh. They may roll in the aisles, but that doesn't mean you have a great picture. You have pathos in the thing."
"I used humor to avoid being picked on as a kid. Or I would try and make my parents laugh, so I wouldn't get in trouble. But as a kid, I would watch Flip Wilson and I would memorize his whole routine, listen to Bill Cosby's records constantly, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball. I just drank that stuff up and loved it."
"So we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies."
"We will all laugh at gilded butterflies."
"Were't not for laughing, I should pity him."
"A good laugh is the best pesticide."
"I know, I pick up the roles other actresses don’t want [laughs]. When there’s movies where there are two sisters and one’s the uglier sister, there’s always no actress that wants to go for it. I’m like, why not! They’re the best roles!"
"If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it."
"If you're funny, if there's something that makes you laugh, then every day's going to be okay."
"It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years."
"For me, I want to get across the stage to the people. I want to point at you, thirty, forty rows back, and you know I'm pointing at you, and we're having a laugh and getting it together."
"I want to make the audience laugh and cry within ten seconds, to show just how close those emotions are."
"If someone who wanted to learn to dance were to say: For centuries, one generation after the other has learned the positions, and it is high time that I take advantage of this and promptly begin with the quadrille--people would presumably laugh a little at him, but in the world of spirit this is very plausible. What, then, is education? I believed it is the course the individual goes through in order to catch up with himself, and the person who will not go through this course is not much helped by being born in the most enlightened age."
"When thou findest thyself scorning another, look then at thy own heart and laugh at thy folly."
"never's the word God listens for when he needs a laugh."
"If you can't laugh when things go bad--laugh and put on a little carnival--then you're either dead or wishing you were."
"Laughter opens your heart and soothes your soul. No one should ever take life so seriously that they forget to laugh at themselves."
"If people are not laughing at your dreams at least once a week, you are aiming too low!"
"Laughing is medicine for the soul."
