“Comedy is the most serious study in the world. I start out to find my characters in real life.” Charlie Chaplin – U.K. comic actor, filmmaker, and composer, became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp. Is considered one of the most important early pioneers in film.
“A comedy isn't about being funny... a comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all.” Gary D. Schmidt – U.S. author, professor.
“Making people laugh is magic. I feel like if you have humility, then you can do anything in comedy.” Amanda Seyfried – U.S. actress, singer.
“The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.” James Thurber – U.S cartoonist, author, humorist, journalist, playwright. Often was published in The New Yorker.
In life, there's a ying and a yang and a balance. And when you don't have balance, you have comedy. George Lopez – U.S. comedian, actor.
"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 – U.S. clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist.
“If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.” Clarence Darrow – U.S. lawyer, prominent member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.” Moliere – French playwright, poet, actor.
“Comedy is a tool of togetherness. It's a way of putting your arm around someone, pointing at something, and saying, 'Isn't it funny that we do that?' It's a way of reaching out.” Kate McKinnon – U.S. actress, comedian, writer.
"A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing." Laura Ingalls Wilder – U.S. author, primarily known for The Little House on the Prairie books.
“Laugh loudly, laugh often, and most important, laugh at yourself.” Chelsea Handler - U.S. comedian, actress, writer, television host, producer.
“You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.” Ethel Barrymore – U.S. actress.
“Without comedy as a defense mechanism I wouldn't be able to survive.” Garry Shandling – U.S. actor, comedian, director, producer and writer.
“Comedy is a fulfillment, accomplishment, overcoming. It is victory over odds, a triumph of good over evil. Comedy is a complete surrender of one's defenses.” Frank Capra - Italian-born American film director, producer and writer.
“When I was in college at UCLA, I took a playwriting course. I was all set to be a writer. But I had to take this acting class as a theater arts major. I had to do this scene in a one-act comedy. I just said this line, and then... this laugh happened. I thought, 'Whoa. This is a really good feeling. What have I been missing?” Carol Burnett – U.S. actress, comedian, singer and writer.
“You feel completely in control when you hear a wave of laughter coming back at you that you have caused.” Gilda Radner – U.S. comedian, actress.
“All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl. … Through humor, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant. It also heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity.” Charlie Chaplin – U.K. comic actor, filmmaker, and composer.
“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.” Erma Bombeck – U.S. humorist, newspaper/magazine columnist.
“Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh.” Vivien Leigh – U.K. actress.
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” Mel Brooks – U.S. actor, comedian, composer, filmmaker.
“Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kind of fades out of it. … Every gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of truth.” Will Rogers – U.S. stage and film actor, vaudeville performer, humorist, newspaper columnist, social commentator.
“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” Sholom Aleichem – Russian born/U.S. author, playwright. Musical comedy “Fiddler On The Roof” was based on his characters and short stories.
“Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies us another chance?” John Updike – U.S. novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, literary critic.
“Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.” F. Scott Fitzgerald – U.S. novelist, essayist, short story writer and screenwriter.
“Imagination was given to us to compensate for what we are not; a sense of humor was given to us to console us for what we are.” Mark McGinnis – U.S. author.
“All humor is rooted in pain.” Richard Pryor – U.S. comedian, actor, writer.
“Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.” George Burns – U.S. comedian, actor, writer.
“Humor is the truth; wit is an exaggeration of the truth.” Stan Laurel – U.K. comic actor, writer, film director.
“Wit is educated insolence.” Aristotle - Greek philosopher.
“A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.” Buster Keaton – U.S. actor, comedian, filmmaker
“Chaos in the midst of chaos is not funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.” Steve Martin – U.S. actor, comedian, writer, producer, musician.
“Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.” Christopher Fry – U.K. poet, playwright.
“Comedy is defiance. It's a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it's the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale.” Will Durst – U.S. political satirist.
“The law of levity is allowed to supersede the law of gravity.” R. A. Lafferty – U.S science fiction/fantasy writer.
“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 - U.S. motivational writer.