Quotes on Jokes

ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious joke.

Well, I mean, if a joke or humor is bawdy, it's got to be funny enough to warrant it. You can't just have it bawdy or dirty just for the sake of being that - it's got to be funny.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

Both of my parents got to see me host Carson, thank God. That's all anyone wants: to have their parents see they're going to be all right in life.

How you speak and the words you use tell much about the image you choose to portray. Use language to build and uplift those around you. Profane, vulgar, or crude language and inappropriate or off-color jokes are offensive to the Lord. Never misuse the name of God or Jesus Christ. The Lord said, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" (Ex. 20:7).

You can't build a plot out of jokes. You need tragic relief. And you need to let people know that when a lot of frightened people are running around with edged weaponry, there are deaths. Stupid deaths, usually. I'm not writing 'The A-Team' - if there's a fight going on, people will get hurt. Not letting this happen would be a betrayal.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don't they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It's obvious I've got big ones and if people want to assume they're not mine, then let them.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

The fine line between roaring with laughter and crying because it's a disaster is a very, very fine line. You see a chap slip on a banana skin in the street and you roar with laughter when he falls slap on his backside. If in doing so you suddenly see he's broken a leg, you very quickly stop laughing and it's not a joke anymore.

Dressing is a pleasure; clothes are not a joke.

Every time a woman makes herself laugh at her husband's often-told jokes she betrays him. The man who looks at his woman and says 'What would I do without you?' is already destroyed.

But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can't be part of the party. Meaning, you can't go horseback riding with Jackie O in Central Park if you're going to make a joke about her that night.

You have to have a passionate opinion; otherwise you sound false. You end up telling the audience jokes they've already heard.

Cartooning is about deconstruction: you gotta tear something down to make a joke.

What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously — but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself.

Please don't make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe. I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one... I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity...

I've learned to have absolutely no regrets about any jokes I've ever done.

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond.