Francis Bacon Quotes

No more Nixon jokes. He is a sick man and we just can’t do that.

It doesn't mean you can't discuss important things, but I would never do a joke about cancer, just because I don't think any joke is funny enough to justify upsetting someone who is going through that.

I like to make jokes; I consider myself a funny person. I just think making jokes about people who are in a situation beyond their control is not funny to them or their families.

When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.

It doesn't worry me what anyone says, except when publicity hurts others.

Better to be disliked than pitied.

In doing what I'm doing, you have to be sensitive to the fact that you're not dealing with numbers, you're dealing with people. And I will continue to be sensitive to that.

There are certain things I don't want to joke about. If it's about somebody else, it's fine. If it's about me, I think it's totally insensitive!

I will do almost anything for the sake of a joke or for the sake of someone's real belief in something to help tell a story. I will not do something shocking for the sake of being nasty. If it's not hurting anyone's feelings, I'm in on the joke.

As a writer, I've always felt it's my job to be extremely careful when writing about victims, especially women.

I think you can make fun of anything except things people can't help. They can't help their race or their sex or their age, so you ridicule their pretension or their ego instead. You can ridicule ideas - ideas don't have feelings. You can ridicule an idea that someone holds without hurting them.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

Never make a joke or try for humor at someone else's expense. In a high-stakes environment, everyone needs to feel safe.

We need to be a bit kinder and more aware of what is really important.

Just based on my own family and background, I would not be in a film that would exploit or sensationalize anyone.

There is no harm in making people laugh by making fun of yourself. What's wrong is when people derive pleasure from making fun of others.

Maintaining the dignity of my subjects has grown to be, over the years, an imperative in my work, both in the taking of the pictures and in their presentation.

It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humor is of the heart, and has its tears; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles - and the majority of those are bitter.

I don't like to do anything that's mean spirited just because I don't find it funny. I'd rather be the jackass than makes fun of somebody else. It just seems too cheap and easy.

Were't not for laughing, I should pity him.

I will never tire of repeating this: what the poor need the most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being.

To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.

Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean. From the very beginning to the very end, pointing to our own hearts to discover what is true isn’t just a matter of honesty but also of compassion and respect for what we see.

Age, per se, may claim tenderness and pity, but not respect; that only comes when the years have brought humanity and wisdom and the experience that worketh hope.

Just because you're funny doesn't mean you get to be cruel.