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- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,052)
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- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,896)
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- 24-Feb-21 - "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST on “The Boston Mob,” speech, Antislavery Meeting, Boston (21 Oct 1855).
- 22-Feb-21 - Letter (1860) | WIST on Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Memoirs of William Miller, quoted in Life (2 May 1955).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Letter, unsent (1927).
- 20-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Remark (Winter 1927).
- 13-Feb-21 - tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19 – Med-stat.info on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917).
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Quotations about comedy
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter to us that humanity highly rewards members of one of the most unusual professions on earth, those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. This is very strange if you stop to think of it: that otherwise sane and responsible citizens should devote their professional energies to causing others to make sharp, explosive, barking-like exhalations.
Steve Allen (1922-2000) American composer, entertainer, and wit.
Funny People, Introduction (1981)
(Source)
We are each the star of our own situation comedy, and, with luck, the screwball friend in someone else’s.
DICAEPOLIS: Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. I shall not please, but I shall say what is true.
Aristophanes (c.450-c.388 BC) Athenian comedic playwright
Acharnians, ll. 500-501 (425 BC) [tr. Athenian Society (1912)]
(Source)
I believe there’s an intrinsic irreverence in the American psyche, and when something comes along that offers even an echo of that irreverence, people respond to it.
Tragedy plus time equals comedy.
Steve Allen (1922-2000) American composer, entertainer, and wit.
“Steve Allen’s Almanac,” Cosmopolitan (Feb 1957)
Similar formulations have been made by Carol Burnett, Lenny Bruce, Bob Newhart, and Woody Allen. For more discussion see here.
I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth, ’tis only fools who are serious.
Harder to laugh at the comedy if it’s about you, harder to cry at the tragedy if it isn’t.
My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh, but my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain.
The difference between a satirist and a humorist is that the satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive.