Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has a kindly eye and a comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary,... uses malice to score a point--like a cat it is quick to jump--but humor keeps the peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homely-spun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper company at the table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the rain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining without its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds its sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers--and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works--should be unlim...ited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative! All information should be free. Mistrust authority--promote decentralization. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is, I confess, a hazard to the philosophical analysis of humor. If one rereads the passages that have been analyzed, one may... no longer be able to laugh at them. This is an occupational hazard: Philosophy is taking the laughter out of humor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Humor has been a fashioning instrument in America, cleaving its way through the national life, holding tenaciously to the spread e...lements of that life. Its mode has often been swift and coarse and ruthless, beyond art and beyond established civilization. It has engaged in warfare against the established heritage, against the bonds of pioneer existence. Its objective--the unconscious objective of a disunited people--has seemed to be that of creating fresh bonds, a new unity, the semblance of a society and the rounded completion of an American type.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer r...egarded as a nation possessed with humor in depth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every American, to the last man, lays claim to a "sense" of humor and guards it as his most significant spiritual trait, yet rejec...ts humor as a contaminating element wherever found. America is a nation of comics and comedians; nevertheless, humor has no stature and is accepted only after the death of the perpetrator.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »