Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.
The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.
There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.
I need a woman to have a quirky sense of humor. There's a bunch of jokes I use, and if she doesn't get them, she's probably not for me.
Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.
There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.
To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.
At NBC I wasn't really sure if the grandparents were going to get my sense of humor on a particular topic.
You know, Freud accepted his lot very stoically and very well and with a sense of humor. He aged and died gracefully, and there's a lot to be said for that.
A myth is a lie that conceals or reveals a truth. But if it reveals even a strand of history or truth, that's what gets my adrenaline going.
Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.
A key goal for an author of history is to persuade his or her readers to forget what they know and to relive the world as it unfolded for characters of the time - with outcomes uncertain.
I've always been interested in intellectual history and in psychology, and anxiety is obviously something that's been a big part of my life.
You think in a different way when you don't have any money. The joy of poverty is that you use your imagination to come up with stuff.
The responses that environmentalists evoke - fear, anxiety, numbness, despair - are not helpful, even if they are understandable. It should be fascinating, even enthralling, to be in the milieu of environmental change.
Maybe climate change is a threat, and maybe climate change has been tarted up by climatologists trolling for research grant cash. It doesn't matter.
Close elections tend to break toward the challenger because undecided voters - having held out so long against the incumbent - are by nature looking for change.
It's hardly surprising that the corporate aliens lie when it comes to the relationship between doing something about climate change and the economy.
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
I'm a sucker for lost worlds. I was nostalgic even as a child. I was happiest in my hometown library in Adams, Mass., where nothing seemed to change.
There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of real developments.
