Laughing quotes
3.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside laughing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the whole thing is so ridiculous that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits, the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the poets ... are interesting?"
"Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait."
"In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane"
"The two best things you can do for a person is have sex or make them laugh."
"You don't need a critic to tell you people aren't laughing."
"People are the same wherever you go. And if they weren't, they wouldn't laugh at the same s**t."
"There are a lot of good comics, no doubt, but as far as the quality of the comics goes, I think what you have is a bunch of situational comics - there are black comics that work only black crowds, gay comics that do only gay crowds, and southern comics that only work down South, and so on with Asian, Latino, Indian, midgets, etc. The previous generation's comics were better because they had to make everybody laugh."
"People basically aren't that racist. They want their laughs. If I make a white guy laugh, he's gonna come see me. He's not gonna go see the white guy who doesn't make him laugh just because that guy is white."
"The thing about having an audience right there laughing is that critics can write what they want, but the proof is right there in front of you."
"I'm pretty good at getting over people throwing stuff at me. If you've been doing stand up long enough you know how to swing back and get the laughs."
"When you become a comedian a lot of stuff that made you laugh before just stops. You stop watching your old cartoons you used to watch. You stop reading the funnies. It's like working at a strip club. You don't come home and turn on the Playboy Channel."
"When I do something good, the audience lets me know immediately. They laugh. That's it."
"We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we're going to die, which gives us a lot to think about, and we have a need for, what I would call, "the transcendent" or "the numinous" or even "the ecstatic" that comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't respond to things of that sort."
"I'm sporty, active, bubbly, I like to make people laugh... I'm the jokester. But I'm also very traditional."
"I've always been a big fan of comedy and sketch comedy, and I like to laugh, but you can't just be funny. You do have to work at it, and you have to try to know what your role is and when you can insert humor, or when it's best not to."
"During last night's Republican debate, Mike Huckabee got a big laugh when he said that Congress has been spending money like John Edwards at a beauty salon. Then Huckabee got an even bigger laugh when he said he's running for president"
"Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great."
"Hemingway and Saroyan had the line, the magic of it. The problem was that Hemingway didn't know how to laugh and Saroyan was filled with sugar."
"We are here to laugh at the odds."
"my 6 foot goddess makes me laugh the laughter of the mutilated who still need love... she has saved me from everything that is not here"
