Ronald Graham Quotes

Comedy is the most palliative way to make a point. People are more willing to listen if they can laugh.

If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.

What's nice with comedy is that you know it's working if it's funny.

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way. My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.

Comedy can reach many more people than, say, a serious lecture on the topic. And comedy might just be the access point to reach people who want to be entertained and also learn something.

Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.

You have to make a joke every 10–15 minutes. It’s a way of keeping up morale.

One of my beliefs as a filmmaker is that if you can make somebody laugh, you can make them listen. With laughter, you can get somebody's guard down, you can open them up to listening to you. They don't feel like they're being preached to or talked down to. I think it helps, it makes really hard to understand information a little more accessible and palatable. And at the end of the day, it makes a movie a little more fun. It doesn't feel so heavy handed.

Recognition is one of the three big elements of comedy.

Magicians are definitely more arrogant. They're kind of like "Abra Kadabra, you're an idiot," they don't let you in on the joke. Comedians, you're always in on the joke unless it's Andy Kaufman.

I think you gotta have some humor [in your story]. People gotta have a moment to laugh and feel that it's not taken 100% serious. That's important.

I had a couple of decent laughs on Townies, but for the most part, delivering a joke that you just know is not funny is hard.

You know the old joke, I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out.

I had a show that people thought used a laugh track. It wasn't; it was the real audience going crazy after everything that resembled a joke, that they could technically call a joke.

I'm about being funny. If I can make a joke using profanity, I will. But for the most part, that can get awfully old and boring.

Journalism should be truthful and entertaining. You know, with news and important facts you can entertain people too. Have a little humor. Life isn't all that deadly all the time, but while you're having fun, tell the truth. If every word of a column is deadly serious, I can't read it. It makes me throw up.

Honestly, I just want to keep people awake. Or at least give you one joke to go to bed with.

People paused to listen to Denise Chávez and she had them - with gum on her shoes, she had them. She said she stepped on gum when she came up to the stage and she couldn't move, so she had to stay in one spot otherwise people would see the Chiclet.

Ted Lewis could make the clarinet talk. What it said was put me back in the case!

I don't write jokes first. I write down topics. I think of what I want to talk about, and then I write the jokes - they don't write me... And even if you don't think it's funny, you won't think it's boring. You might disagree, but you'll listen. And maybe even laugh as you disagree.

Humor is not far from my vocabulary.

I kid because I'm on basic cable.

The kind of über-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, "Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny."

Your audience teaches you how to be funny.

You don't have to think really hard to get the joke. I think humor in general appeals to all people.