Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue. – Woody Allen
Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. Its literary suicide. – Erma Bombeck
Todays comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Todays comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes hes telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week. – Lenny Bruce
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can – Lenny Bruce
Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people. – Angela Carter
Charlie Chaplins genius was in comedy. He has no sense of humor, particularly about himself. – Lita Grey Chaplin
I was doing stand-up at a restaurant and there was a chalkboard on the street out front. It said, Soup of the Day: Cream of Asparagus. Ellen DeGeneres. – Ellen DeGeneres
If I get a hard audience they are not going to get away until they laugh. Those seven laughs a minute — Ive got to have them. – Ken Dodd
Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act. – Marty Feldman
The guy has baggy pants, flat feet, the most miserable, bedraggled-looking little bastard you ever saw; makes itchy gestures as though hes got crabs under his arms — but hes funny. – Sterling Ford
Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface. – Paul Goodman
We mustnt complain too much of being comedians — its an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed — thats all. We are bad comedians, we arent bad men. – Graham Greene
Comedy naturally wears itself out — destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. – William Hazlitt
Life doesnt make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedys job is to point out that it doesnt make sense, and that it doesnt make much difference anyway. – Eric Idle
Comedy comes from conflict, from hatred. – Warren Mitchell
The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth. – George Jean Nathan
I always loved comedy, but I never knew it was something you could learn to do. I always thought that some people are born comedians … just like some people are born dentists. – Paul Reiser
