Humor as a Tool Quotes

If we had a hard time, my mother would sit me down and we would talk about it, and she kept talking and kept processing until we started to laugh about it.

I realized women and humor were linked very closely.

Chris Rock does the political thing really well, but that never worked for me.

Sure, I am funny and have a good sense of humor. Mostly, though, I just tell the truth. The internal dialogue people have in their heads - I just write it.

I know I'm fly - don't get me wrong. But I don't look, like, standard Hollywood. As a comedian, it's something you learn to use.

Over the years, I've learned that a sense of humor is the only skill that allows you to turn sucking at life into a career.

Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.

I think there's plenty of room, even in the most serious activist circles, for humor. Humor can be very effective both to inspire, and as a weapon. Just ask Frank Zappa and Charlie Chaplin.

Throughout history, great leaders have known the power of humor.

Improv changed my life in the best way. I gained so much confidence and really learned how to use my sense of humor to do something other than make sarcastic comments to the TV, though that remains one of my best skills. I stayed in Chicago for college mainly to continue doing improv, which was an awesome decision for me.

Through the years, I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have shared how much they relate to my 'Sordid Lives' family, and how many gay men and women used it to come out to their conservative families through the humor of the film.

Satire doesn't effect change.

One of the real ways out of conflict is humour. It builds bridges; it's a weapon against rigid ideology, narrow thinking, intolerance.

We've always been interested in the commentary on politics and society and how comedy always sort of cuts that with a nice laugh, and the perspective it brings.

Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.

I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy. And I guess I've always liked to channel some kind of personal element to that.

It's up to comedians to shine the light on what's wrong in the world, and we don't want things swept under the rug.

People have their guard down when they're laughing, so they're open to tougher conversations they wouldn't necessarily have. If somebody is guarded while laughing, they're a weirdo.

I had enough therapy to know when I broke it down, it became clearer to me: Yes, comedy was kind of a cleansing thing for me to do.

All my life, my immediate response to emotional pain has been to make jokes. Lots of jokes.

To me, in life, if you have a sense of humor about it, that's how you deal with anything.

I'm a progressive person, very liberal. I have this thing in my head where I'm going to change the world, but with comedy.

What I've been able to do with my character, Madea, and the other characters, with the jokes, is use it as an anesthetic to get to the heart and soul of real issues. And what I've found on stage over the years is that, while making people laugh, I can drop in pearls of wisdom.

My parents and my brother instilled in me my sense of humor. That's kind of the way we communicate with each other, and it's always been a way for me to get to know people.

The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don't get people to laugh unless they surrender - surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they're with you. And they listen to you if you've got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they're your friends.