STEVE ALLEN

Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.

Asthma doesn't seem to bother me any more unless I'm around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar.

The hair is real - it's the head that's a fake.

In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.

Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.

If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.

If there is a God, the phrase that must disgust him is - holy war.

I used to be a heavy gambler. But now I just make mental bets. That's how I lost my mind.

Dark energy is perhaps the biggest mystery in physics.

No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible.

In those of us who have the mysterious ability to amuse others, it is usually the case that even before we were aware of our own abilities, we had become practiced at laughing more than other children in our social circle.

Many comedians and comedy writers have shared the childhood experience of learning to joke to protect themselves from neighborhood bullies when challenge or physical defense were not among the sensible options.

I was in sixth grade the first time I was required to speak in front of an audience. I had terrible stage fright and felt quite ill, in fact, by the time I had to give my little talk to students in another class across the hall.

Do I ever get questions that are rude or impertinent? Yes, but I love to use them. The audience immediately perceives the emotional awkwardness of the situation.

Given a little time for the pain to subside, dreadful experiences often can be the basis of funny jokes or stories.

Pretend you're a southern sheriff. Or Mae West. Or Donald Duck. Buy a western hat and walk around the house like a cowboy. The point of all this, of course, is to draw yourself out of your accustomed groove.

Much of the best humor is found in the frequently tragic reality of human experience.

I personally find it difficult to accept that there could be anyone on earth insensitive to the comic abilities of Laurel and Hardy, Sid Caesar, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, or Martin Short. But no matter who the comic entertainer is, there is always at least a minority prepared to say, 'What's all the excitement about? He doesn't seem funny to me.'

In general, the straight line of a joke sets up a premise, an expectation. Then the funny ending - the punch line - in a sense contradicts the original assumption by refusing to follow what had seemed a reasonable train of thought. Many jokes involve that simple matter of leaping outside what had appeared to be the rules of the game at the moment.

There used to be an art form called the 'comedy of manners.' Why aren't comedies of manners made now in this country? The answer is simple. We no longer have manners to speak of.

It often seems that, for whatever strange reasons, comedians, in addition to their formal performances, have more comic experiences in real life than other people do.

We will take almost any kind of criticism except the observation that we have no sense of humor.

To the extent that there is anything properly identifiable as dignity in our society today, our present writers of comedy would be inclined to treat it as a proper object of ridicule.