Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.

I know a lot of sad people who aren't comedians.

Artistically, I find jokes really satisfying aesthetically, because there's something great about getting an idea down to a sentence or two.

No one is more himself than the moment when he's laughing at a joke. It's at those moments that people's defenses go down, and that's when you can slip in a good idea.

I'm a sponge. I'm obsessed with comedy. I'm obsessed with the idea that you can make somebody laugh, and I love to be around people who can make other people laugh.

Comedy is a funny thing, and it's really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title. You would never go to a club just to see "Live music," you would go to a jazz club to see jazz, a blues club to see blues, etc. But when you go to see "standup comedy," if you don't know the performers material, you really don't have any idea what you're gonna get.

Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry -- and the world laughs harder.

Generally I know that we've hit on a good idea if there's a moment where I'm going "HA HA HA!" because that's usually my starting point, me laughing.

The idea of surprise is part of what makes something funny, or what gets a reaction. At least when I'm an audience member, after you hear a joke so many times it's not as funny because it loses its surprise or its twist. So I think funny has to do with surprise.

Performing comedy, you develop a rhythm of ideas and laughs. I live for it.

But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.

A friend of mine is trying to do a documentary where he brings Jewish and Arab comedians to occupied territories in Israel. He wants to do shows as a way of finding some comedic common denominator. When he proposed the idea to one of the officials at the Jenin refuge camp, the guy just stared at him and said, "This is not a joke to us. We don't think that laughing is the answer."

If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest.' I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing.

I've always been partial to comedy. I love the idea of working on a comedic scene.

Often the ideas in the show start out as ideas that make you laugh - outrageous "what if" ideas. I wanted an outlet for doing those.

You're going to pee in someone's suitcase?" "Do you have any other ideas?" And suddenly Miracolina begins to snicker, then giggle, then giggle, then cackle uncontrollably. "He's going to pee in someone's suitcase!" "Quiet! Do you want people on the bus to hear you?" But Miracolina is beyond help. She's entered into a fullfledged laughter fit-the kind that leaves your stomach hurting. "They're gonna open their suitcase," she blurts between bursts of glee, "And their clothes’ll be full of pee!

The idea behind doing comedies is that you go home a little happier.

The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.

Laughter lifts our spirits, surprises and sometime shocks our expectations, allows us to cross boundaries, reorders our priorities, and gives us access to ideas and associations we rarely ever thought to have.

I think I have a good sense of humor, but I'm not, like, a joke-teller. I get the jokes, which is sometimes half the battle. Believe me, I have no idea why anyone hires me.

Even the idea of a fart makes me laugh. Saying the word 'fart' makes me laugh. I have iFart on my phone. I have remote whoopee cushions. Farts. To me, there's nothing funnier.

Despite being extremely professional, Michael Caine has a giggle which was lethal for me because once you catch his eyes, once you realize the other person is a giggler too, it's curtains.

Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.

Funny always makes the bad things go away.