Being Funny Quotes

‘Part of my act is meant to shake you up. It looks like I’m being funny, but I’m reminding you of other things. Life is tough, darling. Life is hard. And we better laugh at everything; otherwise, we’re going down the tube.’ – Joan Rivers

‘Actually being funny is mostly telling the truth about things.’ – Bernard Sahlins

‘I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice.’ – Woody Allen

‘There’s only one true superpower amongst human beings, and that is being funny. People treat you differently if you can make them laugh.’ – Jeff Garlin

‘You shouldn’t get too close to the truth, because then maybe you stop being funny.’ – Bob Newhart

‘I never thought I was funny, but I enjoy being funny.’ – Nora Dunn

‘I had everything I’d hoped for, but I wasn’t being myself. So I decided to be honest about who I was. It was strange: The people who loved me for being funny suddenly didn’t like me for being… me.’ – Ellen DeGeneres

‘Being funny, it turns out, is like being a bank. It’s a confidence trick. As long as everyone believes in you, you are fine.’ – Evan Davis

‘I feel like anyone who’s ever wanted to be a performer went through this phase, where you thought that being funny equaled doing stuff you already saw on TV.’ – Edi Patterson

‘Robin Williams learned technique. He has the technique of being funny.’ – Paul Mooney

‘I got a lot of support from my parents. That’s the one thing I always appreciated. They didn’t tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.’ – Jim Carrey

‘Being funny is one of my greatest strengths. I can make girls smile when they’re down, and when they’re having a good time, I can carry on the joke.’ – John Krasinski

‘I’m going to take this God-given gift of being funny, and I’m going to spread it out like peanut butter on everything I do.’ – Steve Harvey

‘I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it, and I feel guilty saying that, but it’s the truth. I love my work, but it ain’t easy.’ – Madeline Kahn

‘Thing is, I’m a funny actor, but I’m not good at being funny. I’m going to ramble for a second: I’m an actor who can make things funny in the moment, like in stakes or in circumstances or out of character.’ – Matthew Lillard

‘It’s truly a new day ever since we graced the WWE Universe with our presence. Every time we come out there, you see us being funny, having fun, entertaining people and, of course, preaching the power of positivity. That’s what New Day is all about.’ – Kofi Kingston

‘I got attention by being funny at school, pretending to be retarded, and jumping around with a deformed hand.’ – Leonardo DiCaprio

‘My company is known for being funny as well as moving. You get a bit of everything in these shows. I think people know they’re going to have a surprising experience.’ – Matthew Bourne

‘I think there are a lot of shows out there that value being hip or cool over being funny and heartfelt.’ – Alex Hirsch

‘As a teenager, I found a lot of courage through people on the television being funny or subversive.’ – Simon Amstell

‘You want to have the perfect balance of hot and funny on your Instagram, but you never want too much of either… Don’t try to add humility to your blatant ‘hot’ posts through a half-hearted attempt at being funny. You look good; just own it.’ – Cazzie David

‘Everybody in my family’s funny. Being funny was highly encouraged in our family, I think.’ – Catherine O’Hara

‘I did a lot of sitcoms, and being funny isn’t about being beautiful. Usually, beautiful people aren’t the funny people.’ – Maura Tierney

‘I draw the line at filth and crude language. It seems to be an excuse for not being funny.’ – Rolf Harris

‘When I’m being funny, I try not to offend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them.’ – Kurt Vonnegut

‘You can hate me for being a woman, you can hate me for being smart, you can hate me for being funny, but you hate me because I am doing something you could never do. End of story.’ – Iliza Shlesinger

‘Rapping can be repetition sometimes. Sometimes you gotta highlight your words in a certain kind of way. So I always was a fan of sing-rapping. It was always funny to me a little bit, and I think that being funny and being able to laugh, even at yourself, is a form of flattery.’ – ASAP Ferg

‘You, the actor, must be aware of when you’re being funny, but the character you’re playing should always be oblivious to the fact.’ – Jon Lovitz

‘I had a band before I did standup – I’ve always done music. I got known for being funny, and that’s how I make a living – and from acting – but I never stopped playing and producing and recording music.’ – Eddie Murphy

‘Since she got a cause and stopped being funny. I think she’s real funny, but lately it’s all been hearts and flowers and tears and saving teenagers and creating a role model. And that ain’t funny. No giggles there.’ – Andy Richter

‘The pressure to being a comedian is being funny, but I’ve given that up, so there is no pressure whatsoever.’ – Gilbert Gottfried

‘A comedian’s body is funny as well as his mind being funny, his whole personage is funny.’ – Bobby Darin

‘I would call it a comedy variety show. We have some people just doing straight standup. We usually try to have one musical act of sort. So its just people being funny in different ways, not just sketch, not just standup, not just characters, all of those things.’ – Todd Barry

‘I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don’t know. I mean, how can you tell?’ – Andy Warhol

‘To all the girls out there who think being funny is not sexy, you are wrong!’ – Chad Michael Murray

‘I’d rather not have a moment when I’m known for my looks; being funny and interesting lasts longer.’ – Kelly Ripa

‘I direct with energy. I believe in energy. I think energy is an electric thing in actors. I try to inspire, encourage, and make choices with lots of energy. And truth. I’m big fan of truth and being funny. I like leading 50 people into battle every day.’ – Matthew Lillard

‘I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.’ – Chris Tucker

‘Something about New York, man: You can do more comedy there probably than you can anywhere in the world. If you’re interested in being funny, New York is the place to go.’ – Dave Chappelle

‘And regardless of the fact that in this country, certainly in the arts, we treat comedy as a second-class citizen, I’ve never thought of it that way. I’ve always thought it to be important. The last time I looked, the Greeks were holding up two masks. I’ve always thought of it not only as having equal value, but as the craft of it, being funny.’ – Jeff Daniels

‘I think you figure out how to be funny by necessity. It’s not a natural thing, being funny in the face of tragedy is kind of demented.’ – Julie Brown

‘When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn’t about remembering jokes. It was about creating them.’ – Paul Merton

‘Being funny with a funny voice is more my comfort zone, a broader character that I try to humanize, a kind of silly or wacky persona that I try to fill in.’ – Hank Azaria

‘You find out in life that people really like you funny. So what do you give ’em? Humor. And then if you show them the other side, they don’t like you as much. I find, too, that I can hide behind the idiot’s mask being funny, and you never see the sorrow or the pain.’ – Terry Bradshaw

‘The nightmare is you spend the rest of your life being funny at parties and then people say, ‘Why didn’t you do that when you were on television?” – Conan O’Brien

‘I never know when I am being funny, and the other way too. I don’t think you can think about that. I don’t think you can try to be funny. Some people are just funny.’ – Christopher Walken

‘I actually think of being funny as an odd turn of mind, like a mild disability, some weird way of looking at the world that you can’t get rid of.’ – Calvin Trillin

‘Some actors try to play parts and do things they can’t do. Being funny is one of them. Being funny’s hard.’ – Tom Sizemore

‘The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you’ve immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.’ – Steve Coogan

‘I can’t watch other people doing comedy. As soon as somebody starts being funny I have to turn off because it upsets me. I get comedy indigestion. I just hate anybody else being funny. That’s my job.’ – Jenny Eclair

‘By the way, I’m funniest when I’m not being funny. I’m better to laugh at than with, pretty much.’ – Jemima Kirke

‘I’m a big fan of comedians not having to apologize for anything. Nowadays it seems comedians are always apologizing for being funny.’ – Kevin Dillon

‘It’s interesting – I always thought when I was doing more melodramatic stuff like ‘Everwood’ that the directors were constantly reeling me in and stopping me from being funny.’ – Chris Pratt

‘At the end of the day I’m writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny.’ – Simon Rich

‘Being funny has always mattered a lot to me. It’s why I started acting – to make my friends laugh.’ – Nick Wechsler

‘People want me to be funny all the time. They think I’m being funny no matter what I say or do and that’s not the case.’ – Christopher Guest

‘If you record the world honestly, there’s no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn’t get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included.’ – Lorrie Moore

‘Being funny is a symptom of what’s underneath. You’re pumping out all that energy because something else is going on inside you, some opposing force, something uncomfortable.’ – Faith Prince

‘I’m like the master of ceremonies being funny, and then sometimes people you’re with, girlfriends and stuff, are like, ‘God I wish I had the person on stage to be with all the time.” – Artie Lange

‘A lot of people who claim they’re political comedians are just comedians who have opinions. But they stop being funny the minute they give their opinions.’ – Gilbert Gottfried

‘I never analyze stuff with comedy because it’s boring. It makes you stop being funny. Just be who you are and do what you do, and you’re either funny or you’re not.’ – Jeff Garlin

‘If you try to be funny, you’re not being funny.’ – John Gordon Sinclair

‘Doing stand-up takes the fun out of being funny.’ – Doug Stanhope

‘The hardest part, for real, is probably when you just don’t feel like going on stage and being funny.’ – Greg Giraldo

‘With drama, you know if you’re having a true moment, but in comedy, if somebody doesn’t laugh, then you know you’re not being funny. That’s a really fun challenge, and that’s what draws me to comedy.’ – Brooke Nevin

‘I think maybe I became funny because as a kid, I was a Jew in a town of no Jews, and being funny just instinctively came about as a way to put people at ease around me.’ – Sarah Silverman

‘I love being funny! I started in the theater when I was 9 and, believe it or not, always played the funny part!’ – Robert Knepper

‘I like to have fun, but I don’t think of myself as being funny. But I’m a big jokester, so I make fun of myself a lot!’ – Taylor Lautner

‘If something is shocking without being funny it’s hard to justify.’ – Seth MacFarlane

‘On ‘The Simpsons,’ I will say that we definitely like to comment on what’s going on in the world, and we try to be funny. If we can figure out a way of being funny about it, then we’ve gone part of the way of accomplishing our task.’ – Matt Groening

‘I’ve had an experience through music that has touched almost every part of me. It educated me in ways that I didn’t get educated in school. So we try to lay on a bit of that, through being funny, being serious, playing hard.’ – Bruce Springsteen

‘Being funny, in some ways, is about being connected to psychology.’ – Noah Baumbach

‘Being funny is everything to me.’ – Allison Jones

”Friends’ played in this territory of being funny, and then also just grabbing your heart. And not afraid of that. It was a comedic soap opera. Not being afraid to have an audience feel something, laugh and cry, was quite extraordinary and quite wonderful.’ – Warren Littlefield

‘Years ago, there was a variety theatre in every British town, and people paid to go down and see it. Comedy was the main part of the theatre, and comedians earned a living by being funny. Now you have comedy in television instead. Comedians now have to be funny within a play.’ – Norman Wisdom

‘I’m good at being funny.’ – Tom Stoppard

‘Being funny wasn’t a career choice growing up, it was my way out of situations; a way to survive another day.’ – Tracy Morgan

‘Baseball players practice, runners practice, so how can you practice being funny? You get up onstage. You train as an improviser, playing make-believe, using the vernacular of improvisation, saying ‘yes and’ to other people’s ideas, making statements.’ – Ali Farahnakian

‘I truly think comedy is – being funny is DNA. My dad was a doctor, a wonderful doctor, and people still come up to me today, ‘Your father helped my mother die.’ You know what I’m saying? He made her laugh ’til she died. My father was always very funny.’ – Joan Rivers

‘I don’t know if you know you’re funny, but you enjoy being funny. I know I’m funny because people tell me I am, but when I watch myself, it doesn’t make me laugh. Does that make sense? Because I know the jokes, and to me, I feel like I’m pulling the wool over people’s eyes. And there are probably people who do not enjoy what I do.’ – Greg Behrendt

‘I don’t really find things funny unless they’re deeply tragic at the same time. I think if you’re funny just for the sake of being funny, it’s just frivolous nonsense. To me, all the best comic plays have been written about really serious and rather bleak things.’ – Lee Hall

‘I guess I’m pleased and proud of the respect of my peers, and that when I disappear from the scene or from this earth, I will have left a mark. They’ll say, ‘He did it well.’ I like being funny; it opens people up.’ – Robert Klein

‘I’m probably not very good at rom-com, being funny on demand; I’ll leave that to the comedians.’ – Richard C. Armitage

‘For my first gig, I got $75. I could make money being funny, so I pursued it as a career and have turned it into a lucrative business.’ – Tracy Morgan

‘Jesse Tyler Ferguson is probably one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life. Everything the kid does is funny. I think he tunes his life to being funny.’ – Jesse L. Martin

‘There are precedents for what happens when societies allow the divide between rich and poor to get so huge that it stops being funny and starts becoming a sick, blood-boiling joke. If you had a Tardis, you could go back to 1917 and ask the Russian royal family how it was all going.’ – John Niven

‘If you’re public speaking, imagine yourself feeling confident; if you’re nervous about a date and thinking, ‘I’m gonna be a dork,’ picture yourself being funny. Then it will be familiar to your brain.’ – Lindsey Stirling

‘It’s a sad day when a woman being funny and interested in science is considered newsworthy.’ – Elise Andrew

‘I love the studio audience. That’s where I feel the most at home. You know right away if you’re being funny or not.’ – Kaley Cuoco

‘It’s a grim business, this being funny. Every time you come up with a strong, satiric idea, the world tops it.’ – Del Close

‘People are getting careers from YouTube and uploading videos. And they’re totally different – you can’t necessarily be funny on a video, and then all of a sudden you’re live in a theater. You don’t have the tools yet. It’s a lot more involved to go from being funny on a little iPhone screen to being live in front of people and being funny.’ – Wanda Sykes

”Bridesmaids,’ I think, opened up a door to allow women to show a bunch of different women in different ways of being funny. It was kind of like an arrival moment.’ – Kay Cannon

‘I guess one that wouldn’t be obvious is – well, maybe it’s super obvious, I can’t tell – ‘I Love Lucy’ is my favorite show, going back to when I was 4. I’ve watched every episode I don’t know how many times. It was something to watch women being funny when I was young.’ – Kate Micucci

‘The magic in performing as an entertaining ventriloquist happens when the characters come to life and the interaction between the separate personalities on stage becomes ‘real.’ Then don’t forget that the act has to be funny, and to me, being funny and entertaining any given audience is more important than anything.’ – Jeff Dunham

‘I don’t think comedy necessarily comes from a dark place. But I do think what a lot of us have in common is that, growing up, being funny was a coping mechanism.’ – Sean Hayes

‘A man can add to his sexuality by being funny, whereas a woman can diminish hers. I don’t know why that’s the case: it’s completely unfair.’ – Ronnie Corbett

‘In high school, everyone told me I had a great personality and sense of humor, but I wanted to be the girl who boys liked because she was pretty on top of being funny. I was boy crazy.’ – Ari Graynor

‘It shouldn’t be an issue that we have a black president. Gay marriage shouldn’t be an issue. And women being funny shouldn’t be an issue.’ – Ari Graynor

‘People don’t realize it’s not just about being funny, and they don’t know how perceptive a comedian needs to be about human nature. You have to really be able to read a situation and peoples’ emotions.’ – Erik Griffin

‘One second here and there will make all the difference between something being funny and not being funny. That’s why I like going, ‘Well, we wrote that six months ago, and it was funny one time we read it, but it’s not funny anymore. So what? Just dump it.” – Jonathan Krisel

‘The real challenge lies in maintaining dignity while being funny. I am in awe of Krushna Abhishek’s energy and Bharti Singh’s wit. They are infectious and selfless.’ – Amruta Khanvilkar

‘I’ve always liked being funny and making people laugh. I was a cut-up when I was a kid and was always doing bits for my friends and family. I remember doing pratfalls on the playground in fourth grade for my friend and really hurting my hip.’ – Busy Philipps

‘Ego is hilarious – especially the vanity of a comedian. As soon as you see one start worrying about how cool he is or about how many stadiums he can fill, he stops being funny.’ – Ricky Gervais

‘I wanted to be clever, but being funny came first. That’s how you know someone is clever. They don’t come out and tell you pi to 13 places – they tell you a joke.’ – Ricky Gervais

‘A lot of men are competitive about being funny.’ – Arden Myrin

‘I wanna be funny, but if I have a chance to make a point while being funny – why not?’ – Chris Cubas

‘People use the guise of art, and artistic expression, to do all kinds of hateful things. It’s like Trump and everybody else using the guise of humor to say hateful things, the excuse being, ‘I was just being funny.” – Luvvie Ajayi

‘I like being funny; I like laughing with people.’ – Kyle

‘You always have some trans girl saying, ‘Oh, they were just being funny! They aren’t really transphobic,’ Just like you will always have some black folks defending some white person for using the ‘N’ word because they are ‘cool.” – Angelica Ross

‘I always dreamed of being an entertainer. So, my whole life to some extent, or from the age that I can remember onwards, I knew I was going to have to make some sort of attempt at being noticed for being funny.’ – Lil Dicky

‘I knew I could rap a little bit, which is not the most unique way for being funny. The more I did it, the better I got at rapping, and then I fell in love with the craft of it, and the possibility that I was a good rapper was very intriguing.’ – Lil Dicky

‘Being funny is my biggest differentiator, and I think I’d be a fool not to use that, and there’s nothing I enjoy personally more than making a human being laugh. But then, I also think I have a serious side to me.’ – Lil Dicky

‘The whole point of real comedy is that you can say something that is true, and by being funny, you can make it tolerable for people, and hopefully they’ll laugh at you, too.’ – Dave Rubin

‘I’m a drag queen who is thoughtful and serious about drag in addition to being funny, ambitious, and glamourous.’ – Sasha Velour

‘I’m not someone who shies away from darkness being funny. I think that life is very dark at times, and there are things that are very funny about that.’ – Brett Gelman

‘Being stupid and compassionate are not conflicts. Being mean and being funny and having something to say are not a conflict.’ – El-P

‘Being funny was something I was doing before I understood what that even was. Now I’m making a career out of it.’ – Kayvan Novak

‘Three high schools. I was funny. I thought I was being funny. I just had an opinion about everything that was said in school, so that got me thrown out.’ – Damon Wayans

‘Back when Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin were doing roasts, they were all friends. They knew each other’s children, each other’s wives, each other’s families. It wasn’t about being disrespectful. It was about being funny.’ – Charlie Murphy

‘I think being funny was a coping mechanism because I was always the new kid in school.’ – Tom Segura

‘There’s not many comedy characters that make me laugh as much as The Rock does; it’s nice to have a big muscly guy being funny and stupid.’ – James Acaster

‘I was the troublemaker, always being funny – that’s just who I am.’ – Joan Smalls

‘I was always rewarded for being funny. I liked being funny.’ – Iliza Shlesinger

‘Being funny is very complex.’ – Genndy Tartakovsky

‘There’s nothing worse than trying to be funny and not being funny.’ – Neal Brennan

‘You need to tune into a different way of being funny for kids. They’re learning the rhythm of a joke.’ – Graham Linehan

‘I don’t want to come across the wrong way, which is hard when being funny or sarcastic at times, but I also want to make my posts more interesting.’ – Toni Garrn

‘You shouldn’t worry who gets the funny line, just that you’re being funny as a double act. With us, it flips all the time. There’s no real straight man or funny man.’ – Ant McPartlin

‘I enjoy laughing at other people being funny.’ – Josh Widdicombe

‘I was always interested in being funny and amusing and creating art and comedy.’ – Randy Rainbow

‘No one remembers this because it’s the whipping boy, but ‘The Single Guy’ was very well-reviewed and watched, and then the central concept became attacked by the very people who were putting it on. And then the next thing you know you’re running in fear, and everyone stops being funny.’ – Brad Hall

‘It’s very rare to be able to do a show where the most important thing is being funny.’ – Natasia Demetriou

‘Straight talking and going on your instincts was important when I grew up. And being funny.’ – Lynne Ramsay

‘It would be amazing if we got someone like Sarah Silverman on the show, not having a script and just being herself. That’s the best part of doing this show: just having funny people being funny.’ – Alex Horne

‘I can’t prevent myself of being funny.’ – Gaspar Noe

‘He’s never portrayed as being funny. He was a very funny, happy, lively person. Fun to be around and exciting. He was my hero.’ – Jack Hemingway

‘The whole opportunity of being on ‘Last Comic’ gave me the chance to display me being funny on and off stage.’ – Josh Blue

‘When I got the phone call that I was going to be on ‘Drag Race’ I thought I was going to win. I thought I was going to win ‘Drag Race’ before I was even cast. I’m not even being funny. I’m being serious.’ – Bob the Drag Queen

‘One night I went to this comedy club and paid a hard-earned $5 to get in, and every comic that came up was dry as an old turkey wishbone, as in not even close to being funny. When you’re broke and you pay $5 to see somebody, you want them to be funny.’ – Eddie Griffin

‘Being funny is a very serious business.’ – Soupy Sales

‘Part of my defence mechanism is humour, so sometimes when I’m being funny, it’s just as a way of stopping people from getting in.’ – Simon Amstell

‘I want being funny to be something that I can just use rather than something I need.’ – Simon Amstell