Quote: We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.
Author: Fred A. Allen 1894-1957, American Radio Comic
Quote: While awaiting sentencing, I decided to give stand-up comedy a shot. The judge had suggested I get my act together, and I took him seriously.
Author: Tim Allen 1953-, American Actor, Comedian, Author
Quote: 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.
Author: Woody Allen 1935-, American Director, Screenwriter, Actor, Comedian
Quote: I think being funny is not anyone's first choice.
Author: Woody Allen 1935-, American Director, Screenwriter, Actor, Comedian
Quote: Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.
Author: Erma Bombeck 1927-, American Author, Humorist
Quote: The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour -- ha ha ha ha ha -- they'll take you away, man. You can't.
Author: Lenny Bruce 1925-1966, American Comedian
Quote: Today's 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.'' Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.
Author: Lenny Bruce 1925-1966, American Comedian
Quote: Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.
Author: Angela Carter 1940-1992, British Author
Quote: All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
Author: Charlie Chaplin 1889-1977, British Comic Actor, Filmmaker
Quote: Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
Author: Charlie Chaplin 1889-1977, British Comic Actor, Filmmaker
Quote: Charlie Chaplin's genius was in comedy. He has no sense of humor, particularly about himself.
Author: Lita Grey Chaplin
Quote: 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.''
Author: Ellen DeGeneres
Quote: If I get a hard audience they are not going to get away until they laugh. Those seven laughs a minute -- I've got to have them.
Author: Ken Dodd
Quote: The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.
Author: Marty Feldman
Quote: The guy has baggy pants, flat feet, the most miserable, bedraggled-looking little bastard you ever saw; makes itchy gestures as though he's got crabs under his arms -- but he's funny.
Author: Sterling Ford
Quote: Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.
Author: Christopher Fry 1907-, British Playwright
Quote: Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.
Author: Paul Goodman 1911-1972, American Author, Poet, Critic
Quote: We mustn't complain too much of being comedians -- it's an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed -- that's all. We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men.
Author: Graham Greene 1904-1991, British Novelist
Quote: 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.
Author: William Hazlitt 1778-1830, British Essayist
Quote: A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
Author: Ernest Hemingway 1898-1961, American Writer
Quote: Comedy comes from conflict, from hatred.
Author: Warren Mitchell 1926-, British Actor
Quote: The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.
Author: George Jean Nathan 1882-1958, American Critic
Quote: 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.
Author: Paul Reiser 1957-, American Actor, Comedian, Writer
Quote: My routines come out of total unhappiness. My audiences are my group therapy.
Author: Joan Rivers 1933-, American Comedian, Talk Show Host, Actress
Quote: There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl.
Author: Joan Rivers 1933-, American Comedian, Talk Show Host, Actress
Quote: In comedy, reconcilement with life comes at the point when to the tragic sense only an inalienable difference or dissension with life appears.
Author: Constance Rourke 1885-1941, American Author
Quote: And I did laugh sans intermission an hour by his dial. O noble fool, a worthy fool -- motley's the only wear.
Author: William Shakespeare 1564-1616, British Poet, Playwright, Actor
Quote: Though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve.
Author: William Shakespeare 1564-1616, British Poet, Playwright, Actor
Quote: Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.
Author: James Thurber 1894-1961, American Humorist, Illustrator
Quote: The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
Author: James Thurber 1894-1961, American Humorist, Illustrator
Quote: When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.
Author: FrantOis Truffaut 1932-1984, French Film Critic and Director
Quote: The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape.
Author: Thornton Wilder 1897-1975, American Novelist, Playwright