8 Quotes About Humor From the Funniest People Working Today

1. “If you laugh with somebody, then you know you share something.”

Trevor Noah is one of the great translators of humor’s social power, and this sentence is his simplest proof of it. He grew up in South Africa under apartheid, in a mixed-race family whose very existence was illegal, in a country designed to keep people from seeing one another as alike. Laughter, he discovered, collapsed the distance the law insisted on. When you laugh with someone, you are not merely entertaining them — you are agreeing, in that moment, about what the world is like. You are admitting that you both notice the same absurdity, feel the same way about it, and can stand on the same side of it. That is why humor is such a powerful connector across every division you can name: nationality, race, age, politics. Noah’s entire career has been an argument that comedy is the shortest route between two strangers, because shared laughter is the fastest evidence that neither of you is alone.

— Trevor Noah, interview

2. “I always believe that funny is serious and serious is funny. You don’t really need a distinction between them.”

This is the deepest sentence in the collection, and it comes from the host of The Daily Show — a man who has spent a decade making jokes about politics, race, and global crisis. Noah’s point is that the line between funny and serious is a fiction we maintain for comfort. The most serious things in the world — war, injustice, mortality — are also the most absurd, and the most reliably funny material is almost always dead serious underneath. Think of any great joke you have heard: it was about something that mattered. Noah refuses to let comedy be segregated into the “not serious” category, and equally refuses to let seriousness be treated as a place where laughter cannot go. His observation dissolves a false binary. The funniest people are often the most serious about what they care about, and the most serious conversations are frequently the ones most in need of a laugh to keep them human.

— Trevor Noah, on comedy and seriousness

3. “You can’t just be crass without being witty. Angry crass is horrible.”

Ali Wong’s stand-up specials built a reputation on being shocking — pregnant on stage, swearing with abandon, telling jokes about her body and her marriage that would have been unthinkable for a mainstream female comic a decade earlier. So it matters enormously that her definition of good comedy is not shock but wit. Crassness without wit, she says, is just noise — it reads as anger, and anger is the thing audiences smell and distrust. The craft is the difference. Anyone can say something transgressive; almost no one can say something transgressive and something sharp. Wong’s rule separates provocation from comedy: the provocation is only the doorway, and wit is what has to be waiting inside. It is a reminder that the most memorable humor is never merely bold — it is bold and precise, surprising and true, all at once.

— Ali Wong, on comedy

4. “Comedy has so much to do with honesty, and women can be more open about their emotions.”

Wong’s observation about the relationship between comedy and honesty is quietly radical, because it flips the stereotype. The popular image of the comic is the deflector — the person who uses jokes to avoid sincerity. Wong argues the opposite: the best comedy is a form of radical honesty, and it is precisely the willingness to say the true thing — the embarrassing thing, the unflattering thing — that makes an audience laugh from the gut. When she performs while hugely pregnant and jokes about motherhood’s unglamorous realities, the laughter comes from recognition, not shock. And her point about women being more open with their emotions is a direct challenge to the industry she entered, where women were long told that emotion on stage was weakness. Wong’s comedy argues that openness is not the enemy of funny; it is the source of it.

— Ali Wong, on comedy and honesty

5. “Things have to be funny first, and if they want to have a point, that’s awesome.”

John Mulaney is famous for jokes that somehow manage to be both deeply silly and unexpectedly thoughtful, and this sentence explains the order of operations behind them. The comedy comes first; the meaning is a bonus, never a substitute. Mulaney is describing a discipline that protects the joke from becoming a lecture. The moment an audience feels that the humor is a delivery vehicle for a message — that the joke exists to serve the point rather than the other way around — the joke dies. His rule keeps the craft honest: if it isn’t funny, no amount of insight will save it. But the phrase “that’s awesome” is doing generous work too. He is not saying meaning is forbidden — he is saying it is welcome, as long as it never gets promoted above the laughter. It is the working philosophy of a comedian who trusts his audience to find the point if he has done his job of making them laugh.

— John Mulaney, on writing comedy

6. “I like making fun of myself a lot. I like being made fun of, too. I’ve always enjoyed it. There’s just something really, really funny about someone tearing into me.”

Self-deprecation is the most reliable engine in all of comedy, and Mulaney’s statement is the confession of a master. His specials are built on a persona of cheerful, well-dressed ineptitude — the man who doesn’t understand finances, can’t handle confrontation, and once got into a fight with a stray cat over a bag of popcorn. The comedy works because he is genuinely delighted by his own absurdity rather than bitter about it. There is no self-pity in Mulaney’s self-mockery, only joy, and that joy is what makes it safe. An audience laughs hardest at the person who has already volunteered to be the joke, because it costs nothing to laugh with someone who is laughing at themselves first. It is also quietly strategic: the comic who makes fun of himself first disarms the room, takes away the sharpest weapon anyone could use against him, and earns the right to then aim outward.

— John Mulaney, on self-deprecation

7. “I’m not good at anything except writing jokes.”

Mindy Kaling’s most famous self-assessment is funny precisely because it is so unguarded. On the surface it reads as a joke about being useless — but it is actually a precise description of a woman who found her superpower early and built an entire career on it. Kaling has written for The Office, created and starred in her own shows, published bestselling books, and written major films. “Nothing except writing jokes” is the statement of someone who knows exactly where her talent lives and has optimized her life around it. The line also contains the real secret of the comedy writer’s craft: jokes are not a small skill. To write a joke well you must observe closely, understand people, edit ruthlessly, and find the precise word — which is a broader set of abilities than most people ever develop in any one field. Calling it “the only thing I’m good at” is the joke; the serious truth underneath is that it was enough.

— Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (2011)

8. “Catharsis isn’t art. You can’t rely on catharsis to get a laugh.”

Kaling’s most sophisticated statement about comedy is a warning against the easiest shortcut of all: the emotional release. When a comedian is angry or wounded, it is tempting to mistake the raw emotion for the humor — to believe that because an audience feels the shock or the venting, the moment has worked. Kaling says no. Catharsis is the audience’s feeling, not the joke’s achievement. You cannot build a career, a show, or even a five-minute set on the relief of expressing something; you need an actual joke, structured and timed and written. It is the difference between a rant and a routine. The insight is especially sharp coming from her, because she writes on shows where emotion is everywhere — the trick is never to let the emotion do the joke’s job. Feeling is the raw material. Craft is the art.

— Mindy Kaling, on comedy writing

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