Ethical Humor Quotes

Humor is not an unconditional virtue; its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue; to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.

I love doing great entertainment, but I like the joke to be on me. I don't want to take advantage of some poor person and dog 'em out and let the chips fall.

I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.

There is a strong ethical dimension to the best comedy. Not only does it avoid reinforcing prejudices, it actively challenges them.

Humour very often consists of shrewd perceptions about people. It's usually fun at someone's expense. Nowadays if you're funny at anybody's expense they run to the UN and say, "I must have an ombudsman to protect me." You hardly dare have a shrewd perception about anybody.

You have to have your own internal barometer of what is too far. I try and consider feelings of people in the audience. What you have to try and do is that when there is something that could be seen as a transgression, you actually have a reason to justify the joke.

I try not to be mean for the sake of being mean, and if I do do a joke or a tweet or something that is at someone's expense - and those are my fine lines; obviously they're there - I want it to be something that's pretty much across the board we all as a society agree this is bad.

Whatever the joke is has to be funny, and not coming from a mean-spirited place. I think some things are totally off limits. If someone's spouse died, or one of their children, I would never joke about that in a Roast situation. I don't have any aspirations towards writing any cancer jokes, and there's some stuff that I think is definitely taboo.