Genuine humour is replete with wisdom

• Humor is the mask of wisdom. Friedrich Durrenmatt
• Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt. George Santayana
• Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom. Mark Twain
• Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival. Tom Robbins
• Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing. Clive James

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Wisdom should never be too proud or serious to laugh

• Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfful to seek other than itself. Kahlil Gibran
• Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children. Kahlil Gibran

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Humour is truth…

• Humor is just truth, only faster! Gilda Radner
• Humor is the good natured side of a truth. Mark Twain
• Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Dick Clark
• The love of truth lies at the root of much humor. Robertson Davies
• Humor is the truth; wit is an exaggeration of the truth. Stan Laurel
• I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation. Brendan Coyle
• Just tell the truth, and they’ll accuse you of writing black humor. Charles Willeford
• Surprise is the essence of humor, and nothing is more surprising than truth. Bill Watterson
• Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat. B. White
• Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to. George Saunders
• I do believe that satire and humor can reveal truth in a way that sometimes doesn’t get revealed through other means. Ted Lieu
• Humor is something that thrives between man’s aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth. Victor Borge

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…and laughter is often a recognition or acknowledgement of truth

• The truth makes people laugh. George Lopez
• I left in love, in laughter, and in truth… Bill Hicks
• The best laughs are on the recognition of truth. Keith Johnstone
• The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh. Carl Reiner
• We should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. Friedrich Nietzsche
• I have always noticed that people will never laugh at anything that is not based on truth. Will Rogers
• Tell people the truth, they laugh. The truth is so tragic they have to pretend it’s a joke. Lucille Kallen
• I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, “Ain’t that the truth.” Quincy Jones
• I’ve always thought something that makes you laugh, it makes you laugh because there’s a little bit of truth to it. Adam Savage
• Laughter is sort of a natural truth detector. If you laugh at something, it’s probably because there was some truth in it. Bill Maher
• Irony is the bringing together of two contradictory truths and to make out of the contradiction a new truth, with a laugh or a smile. Anne Hathaway
• The laughter that happens when people are truth-telling and showing up and being real – I call that “knowing laughter.” That’s what happens between people when we recognize the absurdity of the belief that we’re alone in anything. Brené Brown

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The truth about truth is it often tends to be funny

• The truth is funny. Del Close
• The truth is somewhere in the middle of funny and serious. Steve Coogan
• When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. George Bernard Shaw
• If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you. Billy Wilder
• The truth is funny. Honest discovery, observation, and reaction is better than contrived invention. Del Close
• Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth. Mark Van Doren
• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’ Isaac Asimov
• You should tell the truth as often as you can, but in such a way as people don’t believe you or think that you’re being funny. Auberon Waugh
• Truth was funny, because it was an insistent thing, maybe as powerful and insistent as some force of nature, the push of water or wind. Deb Caletti
• Something is funny, most of all, because it’s true, and because the velocity of insight into this truth exceeds our normal standards. Steve Almond
• My way of looking at the world is that if it is true, it is funny and it is dark. No matter how dark it is, I just think it is funny. I can’t help it. Maria Semple

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In fact, some argue truth is the funniest joke of all

• Many a true word is spoken in jest. English Proverb
• Telling the truth is the funniest joke in the world. George Bernard Shaw
• Jokes? There are no jokes. The truth is the funniest joke of all. Muhammad Ali
• A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth. Joseph Conrad
• The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. Katherine Dunn
• A lot of comics just joke around, but it’s just as important to get the truth out there. Lisa Lampanelli
• Joke: A thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline. Oxford Dictionary

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This is why comedy is often said to be a radical form of truth telling

• Comedy is the ultimate truth. Tommy Chong
• Comedy is funny when it comes from truth. Ari Graynor
• Comedy is truth. We should not apologize for it. Joan Rivers
• A solid base for any comedy is just honesty and truth. Elijah Wood
• When you get down to it, at it’s root, Comedy is truth, absurdity, and pain. Lev Yilmaz
• And you know, whether it’s drama or comedy, the best work is based on truth. Tony Hale
• Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith. Christopher Fry
• Comedy is not supposed to be funny. Its supposed to tell the truth and then that’s funny. Paula Patton
• Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end. Sid Caesar
• In good comedy, the structure comes from truth and that weird eye that looks at the way life is. Ciaran Hinds
• It’s a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth; sometimes it delays it. Elvis Costello
• When part of what you’re trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh. Todd Solondz

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Humour makes us more receptive to truth…

• Laughter paves the way to wisdom and truth. Anthony Lambert
• Laughter makes the bitter swallowing of truth, for some, a little easier. Bill Hicks
• If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you. Oscar Wilde
• Dali Lama said, ‘when you open the heart of the person with humor, you can tell him the most truth. But if you tell him truth without humor, the heart closes.’ Marina Abramovic
• People don’t like to be lectured to, but if you can make them laugh, their defenses come down, and for the time being they’ve accepted whatever truth is embedded in your humor. Paul Krassner
• If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth. John Cleese
• I use a lot of humor, and I follow the saying that if you want to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh first, otherwise, they will shoot you. So I can tell you a joke and maybe you will laugh at the beginning. But it’s not about telling jokes. Sayed Kashua

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…which can then pave the way to wisdom and learning

• Laughter is no enemy to learning. Walt Disney
• I think you learn more if you’re laughing at the same time. Mary Ann Shaffer
• If we can open your mind to laughter, we can slip in a little information. Virginia Tooper

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Satire is stripping the veneer off cosy half-truth

• The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again! Michael Flanders
• Satire must always accompany any free society. It is an absolute necessity. Even in the most repressive medieval kingdoms, they understood the need for the court jester, the one soul allowed to tell the truth through laughter. Joe Randazzo

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Wit is exaggeration of truth

• Humor is the truth; wit is an exaggeration of the truth. Stan Laurel
• An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself. Minna Antrim
• There’s a … distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. Dorothy Parker

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