Intellectual Comedy Quotes

People used to think I was just a shouty comic but I was doing stuff about Sartre.

Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom.

Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.

Where do the really best laughs come from? Terrific connections made intellectually, or terrific revelations made emotionally.

There's no doubt about it. Arcadia is Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and, new for him, emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow.

I don't like comedy that I think is bad comedy, where people are trying to be sick for the sake of it, where there's no intellectual point behind it. I like stuff that's got an underlying point of view.

I think comedy has to be an intellectual pursuit. It comes down to logic and analysis. As soon as it becomes emotional, it's not comedy anymore.

I knew I wanted to create a character who was nerdy and kind of square, so when I drew a square sponge, everything came together. And originally his name was SpongeBoy, but there we couldn't use that for trademark reasons.

The key is that I'm always relevant. Some of these comedians have nothing to say. They don't have any ideas so it's "F" this and "F" that. They give you a whole series of swear words and it's really just a way for them to get themselves out of trouble when they can't come up with anything. They're irrelevant and ridiculous.

I did an episode of a show called 'Mind Games,' which is no longer on the air, and it was an intellectual comedy-drama. It was just really smart TV.

I try to create some stupid entertainment for really smart people that they don't feel too stupid watching. In 'Xanadu,' the biggest laugh was a reference to Achilles.

Comedy is an intellectual affair, and deals chiefly with logic. Tragedy is an emotional affair, and deals chiefly with value. Horace Walpole once said that "life is a comedy to the man who thinks and a tragedy to the man who feels." Comedy is negative; it is a criticism of limitations and an unwillingness to accept them. Tragedy is positive; it is an uncritical acceptance of the positive content of that which is delimited. Since comedy deals with the limitations of actual situations and tragedy with their positive content, comedy must ridicule and tragedy must endorse.