A Trusted Friend in a Complicated World

100 Funny Quotes and Hilarious Sayings

Your complete guide to funny quotes, hilarious sayings, and witty comebacks for every occasion.

Funniest quotes of all time

Whether you’re looking for funny quotes to make a point, enliven a presentation, give a toast, or just for your own amusement, you’ve come to the right place. Reader’s Digest has been collecting funny quotes and sayings since our first issue in 1922, we’ve pulled together some all-time classics.

Aldo Cammarota 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about marriage

1. “My advice to you is get married: If you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” —Socrates

2. “If you want to be sure that you never forget your wife’s birthday, just try forgetting it once.” —Aldo Cammarota

3. “Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow Internet service to see who they really are.” —Will Ferrell

4. “Never criticize your spouse’s faults; if it weren’t for them, your mate might have found someone better than you.” —Jay Trachman

Phyllis Diller 100 Funniest Quotes
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More funny quotes about marriage

5. “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” —Phyllis Diller

6. “Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.” —Rod Stewart

7. “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” —Jim Carrey

Paula Poundstone 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about parenting

8. “Adults are always asking children what they want to be when they grow up because they’re looking for ideas.” —Paula Poundstone

9. “A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.” —Dave Barry

10. “Just be good and kind to your children. Not only are they the future of the world, they’re the ones who can sign you into a home.” —Dennis Miller

11. “When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.” —Rodney Dangerfield

Reese Witherspoon 100 Funniest Quotes
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More funny quotes about parenting

12. “If you are not yelling at your kids, you are not spending enough time with them.” —Reese Witherspoon

13. “When your mother asks, ‘Do you want a piece of advice?’ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.”—Erma Bombeck

14. “Kids are expensive, I didn’t even realize how broke I was until last year someone stole my identity and it ruined her life.”—Kate Davis

15. “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.” —Phyllis Diller

Jerry Seinfeld 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about families

16. “It seems I have spent a lifetime of mouthing mechanically, ‘Say thank you. Sit up straight. Use your napkin. Close your mouth when you chew. Don’t lean back in your chair.’ Just when I finally got my husband squared away, the kids came along.” —Erma Bombeck

17. “There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.” —Jerry Seinfeld

18. “There are two classes of travel—first class and with children.”—Robert Benchley

19. “Happiness is having a large, caring, close-knit family in another city.” —George Burns

Phil Pastoret 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about dogs

20. “When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.” —Nora Ephron

21. “A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.” —Robert Benchley

22. “If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of fun out of owning one.” —Andrew A. Rooney

23. “If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.” —Phil Pastoret

Jeff Valdez 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about cats

24. “The cat could very well be man’s best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.” —Doug Larson

25. “Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.” —Jeff Valdez

26. “In order to maintain a well­-balanced perspective, the person who has a dog to worship him should also have a cat to ignore him.” —Peterborough Examiner, Canada

27. “Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.” —Anonymous

Anonymous 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about friends

28. “Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families.” —Anonymous

29. “The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re okay, then it’s you.” —Rita Mae Brown

30. “The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.” —Mark Twain

Don’t forget to send these funny friendship quotes to your BFF for some laughs!

Oscar Wilde 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about enemies

31. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”—Oscar Wilde

32. “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.” —G.K. Chesterton

33. “If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.” —George Carlin

Dorothy Parker 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about money

34. “If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gave it to.” —Dorothy Parker

35. “Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need most.” —Addison H. Hallock

36. “Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It’s cheaper.” —Quentin Crisp

Joan Rivers 100 Funniest Quotes
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More funny quotes about money

37. “People say money is not the key to happiness, but I have always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.”—Joan Rivers

38. “Anybody who tells you money can’t buy happiness never had any.” —Samuel L. Jackson

39. “Misers are no fun to live with, but they make great ancestors.” —Tom Snyder

Jerome K. Jerome 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about work

40. “Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.” —Robert Benchley

41. “I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” —Jerome K. Jerome

42. “Doing nothing is very hard to do. You never know when you’re finished.” —Leslie Nielsen

Edgar Bergen 100 Funniest Quotes
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More funny quotes about work

43. “Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?” —Edgar Bergen

44. “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” —Mark Twain

45. “All I’ve ever wanted was an honest week’s pay for an honest day’s work.” —Steve Martin, in the film Sgt. Bilko.

Up for more laughs? Here are some more hilariously funny work quotes.

Kurt Vonnegut 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about education

46. “A college education is one of the few things a person is willing to pay for and not get.” —William Lowe Bryan

47. “In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.” —Fran Lebowitz

48. “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” —Kurt Vonnegut

Lucille Ball 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about aging

49. “The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”—Lucille Ball

50. “You are only young once. After that you have to think up some other excuse.” —Billy Arthur

51. “By the time you’re 80 years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.” —George Burns

Speaking of aging, read some of the most notable funny last words ever spoken.

Anonymous (2) 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about gossip

52. “You can’t believe everything you hear—but you can repeat it.” —Anonymous

53. “A gossip is a person who creates the smoke in which other people assume there’s fire.” —Dan Bennett

54. “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” —Oscar Wilde

If you’re enjoying these, give these funny sayings a go too.

Judith Martin 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about advice and criticism

55. “If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.” —Judith Martin

56. “It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.” —Malcolm Forbes

57. “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain—and most do.” —Dale Carnegie

Mike Bechtle 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about emotions

58. “People can’t drive you crazy if you don’t give them the keys.” —Mike Bechtle

59. “Sometimes you lie in bed at night and you don’t have a single thing to worry about. That always worries me!” —Charlie Brown 

60. “Keep your temper. Nobody else wants it.” —Dearborn Independent

Yogi Berra 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about food

61. “If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?” —John Cleese

62. “Never eat more than you can lift.” —Miss Piggy

63. “When the waitress asked if I wanted my pizza cut into four or eight slices, I said, ‘Four. I don’t think I can eat eight.'”—Yogi Berra

W.C. Fields 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about drink

64. “Not all chemicals are bad. Without hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.” —Dave Barry

65. “I always cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.” —W.C. Fields

66. “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” —Ernest Hemingway

Redd Fox 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about health

67. “All the things I like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.” —Alexander Woollcott

68. “Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.” —Redd Fox

69. “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” —Mark Twain 

Stephen Colbert 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about politics

70. “It is useless to try to hold a person to anything he says while he’s madly in love, drunk, or running for office.” —B. Birdsong

71. “The only time some fellows are ever seen with their wives is after they’ve been indicted.” —Kin Hubbard

72. “If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn’t have declared their independence from it.” —Stephen Colbert

Steve Martin 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about success

73. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.” —W.C. Fields

74. “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” —Gore Vidal

75. “Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent.” —Steve Martin

Anonymous (3) 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about happiness

76. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” —Anonymous

77. “Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.” —Bo Derek

78. “One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.” —Rita Mae Brown

Abraham Lincoln 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about bores

79. “A bore is the kind of man who, when you ask him how he is, he tells you.” —Channing Pollock

80. “She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation.” —Jean Webster

81. “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.”  —Abraham Lincoln

82. “By the time someone says, ‘To make a long story short,’ it’s too late.” —Don Herold

Henry Clapp 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about egotists

83. “There but for the grace of God, goes God.” —Anonymous, commenting on the film director Orson Welles

84. “He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” —Henry Clapp

85. “The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people.” —Lucille S. Harper

86. “People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” —Isaac Asimov

James Branch Cabell 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about optimism and pessimism

87. “An optimist is someone who falls off the Empire State Building, and after 50 floors says, ‘So far so good!'” —Anonymous

88. “The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.” —George Will

89. “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.” —James Branch Cabell

Garrison Keillor 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about intelligence

90. “I’m not offended by blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb…and I also know that I’m not blonde.” —Dolly Parton

91. “We use 10% of our brains. Imagine how much we could accomplish if we used the other 60%.” —Ellen DeGeneres

92.  “My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.” —Billy Connolly

93. “When it doubt, look intelligent.” —Garrison Keillor

Albert Einstein 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about stupidity

94. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” —Albert Einstein

95. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.” —George Carlin

96. “User: the word computer professionals use when they mean ‘idiot.'” —Dave Barry

97. “If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” —Will Rogers

Yogi Berra (2) 100 Funniest Quotes
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Funny quotes about death

98. “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that seem right? That means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” —Jerry Seinfeld

99. “I don’t believe in reincarnation, and I didn’t believe in it when I was a hamster.” —Shane Richie

100. “Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t come to yours.” —Yogi Berra

Additional reporting research done by Linda Roman and Greg Daugherty