Milos Forman Quotes

As a species, we would not have survived without humor.

The ability for us to laugh at ourselves is Britain's saving grace.

People in Russia adapt to misery by a deep, deep humor.

Comedy arises out of necessity, because some things are so dark that you have to laugh about it.

When things get so absurd and so stupid and so ridiculous that you just can't bear it, you cannot help but turn everything into a joke.

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.

Perhaps naively I thought people understand what humor was, that it was invented by the human race to cope with the dark areas of life, problems and terrors.

Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

This is the country that lives in us .... There it must find its nutriment or die.

A nation is a work of art and a work of time.

A lot of people may not read the history of their own country, but they carry on memories transmitted by previous generations. They're trying to achieve something, [they] have their mission and anger -- all this is fed by past experience of history.

We are reminded here of our past, of the continuity of our national story, and the virtues of resilience, ingenuity, and tolerance which created it…

Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.

I don't know if I realized that I was funny, but I realized how healing and important humor was in my childhood.

For Conservatives, all disputes over law, liberty and justice are addressed to a historic and existing community. The root of politics, they believe, is attachment - the motive in human beings that binds them to the place, the customs, the history and the people who are theirs.

I just love learning about the past and everything we've been through as people and as a country.

Humor was how I got through everything in my life. I used to find a funny way to get out of situations. That's who I was. That's who I am!

I find myself laughing at really bad situations.

I think a sense of humor is the most important thing anyone can have.

In the West the past is like a dead animal. It is a carcass picked at by the flies that call themselves historians and biographers. But in my culture the past lives. My people feel this way in part because death does not separate us from our ancestors.

It is important for all of us to appreciate where we come from and how that history has really shaped us in ways that we might not understand.

I think laughter is the best medicine. If you can't laugh at yourself, then you can't laugh at life and the silliness of it all.

A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.