Jokes

Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
- Baltasar Gracian, 1601 - 1656

When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.
- Garrison Keillor

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
- Georg Christopher Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
- Will Rogers, 1879 - 1935

I've decided to be a dull, morose bore at these press meetings. It's the only safe course. You give me no choice. I tell a joke and you convert it into an international incident. I coin a whimsical term and you make it appear I am at odds with the President. I indulge in some polite banter and you interpret it as a split in the Party.
- Everett McKinley Dirksen, 1896 - 1969