Farce Quotes

• All of Creation’s a farce. Man was born as a joke. In his head his reason is buffeted Like wind-blown smoke. Life is a game. Everyone ridicules everyone else. But he who has the last laugh Laughs longest.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Wind, Games

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• History repeats itself, the first as tragedy, then as farce.

  Karl Marx

  Funny, Sarcastic, Philosophy

  "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon".

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• Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.

  Chuck Jones

  Real, People, Comedy

  Chuck Jones (1999). “Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist”, p.166, Macmillan

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• History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Turns, Repeats

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• Farce treats the improbable as probable, the impossible as possible.

  George P. Baker

  Impossible, Treats, Improbable

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• Bring down the curtain, the farce is over

  Francois Rabelais

  Funny, Curtains

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• There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

  Mark Twain

  Art, Philosophy, Animal

  Mark Twain (1889). “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, p.291, Createspace Independent Pub

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• Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

  John Mortimer

  Tragedy, Theatre, Revolution

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  Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

  James Madison

  Education, Wisdom, Freedom

  1822; cited in U.S. Senate, Alleged Assassination Plots (1975).

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• Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Kings, Age, Theatre

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" by John Bartlett, 10th ed., 1919.

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• Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Life, Life Is

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• I always try to keep in mind that while the characters in a farce may find themselves in outrageous dilemmas, and may behave in a way that the audience finds amusing, the characters themselves don't have the consolation of knowing they're in a comedy.

  Rupert Holmes

  Character, Knowing, Mind

  "PLAYBILL BRIEF ENCOUNTER With Rupert Holmes, Lyricist-Librettist of The Nutty Professor". Interview with Kenneth Jones, www.playbill.com. August 4, 2012.

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• Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

  Karl Marx

  Historical, Tragedy, Add

  Karl Marx (1935). “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, New York : International publishers

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• The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

  Steven Weinberg

  Life, Education, Money

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.42, Harvard University Press

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• As Karl Marx once noted: 'Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.' William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce.

  Michael Shermer

  Science, Intelligent, History

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• In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Exercise, Atheism, Facts

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1796). “A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects”, p.37

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• The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

  James Thurber

  Animal, Men, Law

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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• The farce is finished. I go to seek a vast perhaps.

  Francois Rabelais

  Life, Death, Insanity

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• Most of us live for the critic, and he lives on us. He doesn't sacrifice himself. He gets so much a line for writing a criticism. If the birds should read the newspapers, they would all take to changing their notes. The parrots would exchange with the nightingales, and what a farce it would be!

  William Morris Hunt

  Writing, Sacrifice, Bird

  William Morris Hunt (1878). “W.M. Hunt's Talks about Art: With a Letter from J.E. Millais”

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• Fashion as a whole is a farce, completely. The people behind it are perverted, the styles are created by freaked out people, just natural weirdos. I know this because I worked with all those people while I was modeling.

  Edie Sedgwick

  Fashion, People, Style

  "Edie : American Girl". Book by Jean Stein and George Plimpton, 1982.

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• The number who actually consented to the Constitution of the United States, at the first, was very small. Considered as the act of the whole people, the adoption of the Constitution was the merest farce and imposture, binding upon nobody.

  Lysander Spooner

  Numbers, People, Adoption

  Lysander Spooner (1867). “No Treason: No. 1-”

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• Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.

  Dick Cavett

  Running, Drama, Tragedy

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• Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.

  Peter Shaffer

  Dark, Light, Play

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• The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act.

  Thomas Paine

  Religion

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• Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

  Jean Anouilh

  Fake People, Inspiration, Giving

  Jean Anouilh (1960). “Becket or the Honor of God”

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