75+ Famous Humor Quotes For All Time

Humor refers to the quality or ability to provoke laughter, amusement, or enjoyment in people. It’s a complex and culturally influenced aspect of human communication and expression. Humor can take many forms, including jokes, puns, wordplay, satire, sarcasm, absurdity, irony, and more. Different individuals and cultures may find different things funny, and humor often involves surprise, incongruity, or clever twists that play with expectations. It can serve as a social bonding tool, relieve stress, and provide commentary on various aspects of life and society. Overall, humor adds joy and lightheartedness to human interactions and creative works.

Humor Quotes

1. “Good planning is important. I’ve also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you’re in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you’re depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension.”
— Edmund Hillary

2. “Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.”
— Romain Gary

3. “He who laughs, lasts.”
— Mary Pettibone Poole

4. “If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

5. “The sense of humor is the oil of life’s engine. Without it, the machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of things is so grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh.”
— G.S Merriam

6. “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”
— Clive James

7. “Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.”
— Christopher Morley

8. “You may not be able to change a situation, but with humor you can change your attitude about it.”
— Allen Klein

9. “Laugh as much as possible, always laugh. It’s the sweetest thing one can do for oneself & one’s fellow human beings.”
— Maya Angelou

10. “The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”
— Mark Twain

11. “Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”
— Mark Twain

12. “A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road.”
— Henry Ward Beecher

13. “There is nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.”
— Eva Hoffman

14. “There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”
— Erma Bombeck

15. “I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.”
— Anne Wilson Schaef

16. “Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.”
— Langston Hughes

17. “Humor is just another defense against the universe.”
— Mel Brooks

18. “Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.”
— Langston Hughes

19. “The secret to humor is surprise.”
— Aristotle

20. “Humor is something that thrives between man’s aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.”
— Victor Borge

21. “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”
— E.B. White

22. “The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense.”
— Jacob August Riis

23. “Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.”
— Edward de Bono

24. “Humor is the most engaging cowardice.”
— Robert Frost

25. “Humor is reason gone mad.”
— Groucho Marx

26. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
— Groucho Marx

27. “There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.”
— Mindy Kaling

28. “Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.”
— Steven Wright

29. “I always cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.”
— W.C. Fields

30. “The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.”
— Hugh Sidey

31. “People say money is not the key to happiness, but I have always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.”
— Joan Rivers

32. “I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

33. “I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”
— Lily Tomlin

34. “Sometimes you lie in bed at night and you don’t have a single thing to worry about. That always worries me!”
— Charlie Brown

35. “If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.”
— Steven Wright

36. “My favorite machine at the gym is the vending machine.”
— Caroline Rhea

37. “Housekeeping is like being caught in a revolving door.”
— Marcelene Cox

38. “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”
— Charles M. Schulz

39. “Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.”
— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

40. “When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.”
— Erma Bombeck

41. “Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.”
— Grenville Kleiser

42. “Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.”
— Jimmy Buffet

43. “A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, so much better.”
— Barbara Walters

44. “I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.”
— Audrey Hepburn

45. “Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.”
— Bill Cosby

46. “A sense of humor… is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.”
— Hugh Sidey

47. “I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.”
— Bob Hope

48. “A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.”
— William Arthur Ward

49. “A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.”
— Mignon McLaughlin

50. “Humor is one of the best ingredients of survival.”
— Aung San Suu Kyi

51. “Humor is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.”
— Simon Wiesenthal

52. “Humor can alter any situation and help us cope at the very instant we are laughing.”
— Allen Klein

53. “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
— Charlie Chaplin

54. “Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.”
— W.C Fields

55. “Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and laughter abundant.”
— Washington Irving

56. “A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

57. “You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.”
— W. Somerset Maugham

58. “Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.”
— Virginia Woolf

59. “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
— E.E. Cummings

60. “Laughter is the closest distance between two people.”
— Victor Borge

61. “Humor is everywhere in that there’s irony in just about anything a human does.”
— Bill Nye

62. “No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.”
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

63. “Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.”
— Leo Rosten

64. “A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.”
— Doug Larson

65. “I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.”
— Frank A. Clark

66. “Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”
— James Thurber

67. “If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humor.”
— Jennifer Jones

68. “Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
— Francis Bacon

69. “Most comedy is based on getting a laugh at somebody else’s expense. And I find that that’s just a form of bullying in a major way. So I want to be an example that you can be funny and be kind, and make people laugh without hurting somebody else’s feelings.”
— Ellen DeGeneres

70. “Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.”
— Will Rogers

71. “From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”
— Dr. Seuss

72. “Laughter is an instant vacation.”
— Milton Berle

73. “Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.”
— Sid Caesar

74. “I’m not funny. What I am is brave.”
— Lucille Ball

75. “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.”
— Peter Ustinov

76. “I think the scariest person in the world is the person with no sense of humor.”
— Michael J. Fox

77. “It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.”
— Max Eastman

78. “It’s always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it’s just hilarious.”
— Bill Hicks