Quotes about humor

'...and we have already seen how insurance is like a pyramid -

(Huge, incomprehensible, hideously expensive, completely unnecessary and specifically designed only to be of benefit to you once you're dead?)'

In the beginning was the Word. Nobody knows what it actually was, although it would be nice to think that it was 'Sorry.

The best definition of an immortal is someone who hasn't died yet.

Like fish, accountants see things in a different way from people, and details which people find unimportant are their reason for existing.

Well, it's a bit late now, isn't it? Besides, I never could be doing with lawyers. Did you ever meet a lawyer whose life you would willingly have saved in the event of fire? Not me.

An over-excited accountant, like the University of Hull, is a contradiction in terms.

And what do they like doing best of all? They like taking off all their clothes—clothes over which they have expended so much effort and ingenuity—and doing biologically necessary but profoundly undignified things to other human beings. Any pig or spider can do that, it’s the easiest thing in the world. But you bloody humans, who can do so much that no other species could ever do, you can’t do that efficiently. You agonize over it. You make an incredible fuss over it. You get it all wrong, you make each others’ lives miserable, you write dreary letters and take overdoses. You even invent a medicine that deliberately makes the whole process futile. My God, what a species!

If he had any philosophy of life, it was that everything happens by accident, and that at any given time, ninety-nine-point-nine-five per cent of the human race are a confounded nuisance.

It is galling, to say the least, to have been to every place in the world and then not know where somewhere is. It's rather like having a doctorate in semiconductor physics and not being able to wire a plug. You begin to wonder whether it's all been worthwhile.

Malcolm had never been greatly inclined to metaphysical or religious speculation, but he had hoped that if there was a supreme being or divine agency, it would at least show the elements of logic and common sense in its actions. Seemingly, not so. On the other hand, the revelation that the destiny of the world had been shaped by a bunch of verbose idiots went some way towards explaining the problems of human existence.

“It was basically a form of gambling, and it went something like this.

“The Fuggers would think of something that was extremely unlikely to happen, and then they would persuade someone to wager them money that it would. Now the proper term for this arrangement is a sucker bet, but the Fuggers wanted to find a respectable name for it, so they called it Insurance. It caught on, just as they knew it would, and soon it became so respectable that they were able to get people to make a new bet every year, and they called this sort of bet a premium.”

His role in history was rather like that of lettuce in the average salad; it achieves no useful purpose, but there's always a lot of it.