Isn’t it only through laughter that we become one with the gods and thus can endure life and can overcome all the horror and waste and suffering here on earth? Like tonight, watching all those brave men meet their fate here, on this shore, on this gentle night, through a karma ordained a thousand lifetimes ago, or perhaps even one. Isn’t it only through laughter we can stay human?

Maybe laughter after someone dies is the way we tell ourselves that they are still alive in some way. Or that we are.

I finally understood why laughter is a mark of wanderers, from the holy fools of Old Russia to the roadies of rock music. It’s the surprise, the unexpected, the out of control. It turns out that laughter is the only free emotion — the only one that can’t be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we’re in love because, if we’re kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third, when we suddenly see a new reality.

If I can laugh, I can live.

Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter.

Now — unless some zoologist can dig up a weird exception — humans are the only living beings who wear clothes. They are also the only beings who laugh, for humor is the property of humanity and consists, essentially, in not taking oneself seriously. (Consider the situation of someone chasing a hat blown off by the wind.) People can laugh at themselves because they know, deep down, that their lives are a big act, a put-on.

Laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third and when we suddenly see a new reality...laughter is an orgasm of the mind.

The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.

Laughing is medicine for the soul.

I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.

Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh - because if you don't laugh you're going to cry and never stop crying - that's probably what's responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor. The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh.

What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.