Georges Courteline Quotes

I think that a big part of comedy is being made fun of, and it is looking silly or looking stupid.

I always believe that funny is serious and serious is funny. You don't really need a distinction between them.

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

I wanted to make a film about stupid people that was very vulgar and deeply stupid. From that moment on I can hardly be reproached for making a film that is about stupid people.

Everything I say is a joke. I am a joke myself.

Ridicule is the first and last argument of a fool.

When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beat us to it.

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh.

… the most superlatively ridiculous thing

It's an old Elizabethan idea. The fool is the only one who is allowed to make fun of the king because he is a fool. I can say whatever I want about anybody else because I'm just an idiot talking - I'm not insisting that I'm any smarter than anyone else. It's satire.

In a satire, you need foolishness.

There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.

Through humour, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant

Madmen and fools see everything through the medium of humor.

By rights, satire is a lonely and introspective occupation, for nobody can describe a fool to the life without much patient self-inspection.

Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature: delight hath a joy in it either permanent or present; laughter hath only a scornful tickling.

Many, affecting wit beyond their power, Have got to be a dear fool for an hour.

Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send him back to his father and brothers, who are waiting for him with open arms in the penitentiary. I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth.

If folly disappeared, wit would starve.

You can laugh at somebody because they are innocent, and because they are naive or they are about to walk into a wall, but if somebody's giving you stuff, if somebody's talking, giving you their take on things, what makes you laugh, generally speaking, is going to be somebody who is telling it in an angry way.

You can get rich making fun of me. I know. I've made lots of money making fun of me.

The best way to make the most serious point in the world is to be as unserious as possible.

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

No subject is unsuitable for comedy.