Jewish Humor Quotes

Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.

There's a charm, there's a rhythm, there's a soul to Jewish humor. When I first saw Richard Pryor perform, I told him, 'You're doing a Jewish act.'

I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.

Jewish introspection and Jewish humor is a way of surviving . . . if you're not handsome and you're not athletic and you're not rich, there's still one last hope with girls, which is being funny.

When people, especially from France, would ask me to talk about or so they could write about New York Jewish humor, I'd say I don't know anything about New York Jewish humor. I know who Zero Mostel was and I know Mel Brooks, but that's about all I could tell you about New York Jewish humor.

An interesting difference between African-American humor and Jewish humor, in it's kind of basic or maybe most austere type form is, African-American humor, some of it comes out of playing the dozens in which you insult the other person or insult the other person's mother, and so much of Jewish humor is like, you're insulting yourself. It's totally self-deprecating.