Humor is so important to survival. Laughter is actually good for you and those that can find ways to maintain both are lucky when it comes to dealing with life’s many difficulties. It’s importance has been a topic of much discussion and many of the greatest minds both comedic and otherwise have had much to say about it. Here are some choice quotes I found today and wanted to share. Please add your own favorite quotes in the comments if you are so inclined.

• Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist. ~George Burns

• I try to offset any tendency towards the macabre with humor. As I see it, this is a typically English form of humor. It’s a piece with such jokes as the one about the man who was being led to the gallows to be hanged. He looked at the trap door in the gallows, which was flimsily constructed, and he asked in some alarm, ‘I say, is that thing safe?’ ~Alfred Hitchcock

• A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

• Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place. ~Mark Twain

• Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.~Peter Ustinov

• There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.~Will Rogers

• “Don’t be so humble – you are not that great.” ~Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

• “I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.” ~e e cummings

• “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” ~Oscar Wilde

• “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.~ Voltaire