Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.

About Mel Brooks

Portrait of Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks (born Melvin James Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, songwriter and playwright. With a career spanning nine decades, he is known for a variety of successful farces and parodies. A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of the few people to win the...

More quotations from Mel Brooks

If you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living.

Comedy is when you accidentally fall off a cliff and die. Tragedy is when I have a hangnail.

One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.

If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

God humor flight

Good taste is the enemy of comedy.

More quotations tagged with “humor”

One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.

The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

—Larry Gelbart

There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

—James Thurber

If you're at school and you're not that bright or good-looking or popular or whatever, and one day you say something and someone laughs, well, you sort of grab onto it, don't you? you think, well I run funny and I've got this stupid big face and big thighs and no-one fancies me, but at least I can make people laugh. And It's such a nice feeling, making someone laugh, that maybe you get a bit reliant on it. Like, if you're not funny then you're not… anything.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

History

11 Jul 2015 Added