Last Updated on Mar 5, 2020 by James W
Workplace boredom is never fun. If it’s a slow day at the office, or if you’re waiting for feedback before proceeding with a project, it can be hard to make the time pass. Hard as we try, staring at the clock just won’t make the hands move. If boredom is driving you out of your tree, this selection from the Top 100 Funny Quotes of All Time is sure to have you roaring in no time.
“I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.”
This joke, courtesy of comedy legend Rodney Dangerfield, is characteristic of the comic’s style of reversing expectations in a self-deprecating manner. Dangerfield is renowned for jokes that play on the meanings of words, phrases, and our conceptions of how social situations are supposed to work. In this classic example, the term “seeing” is used to mean two very different things. In the first context, Dangerfield admits to being a psychiatric patient. In the second sentence, his wife confesses to having multiple affairs. Talk about not getting any respect.
“Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it, and he’ll have to touch it to be sure.”
This anonymous quip cuts straight to the core of what it means to be human. The innate sense of wonder and curiosity that we all have drives us to seek understanding about our world. If it is possible to apprehend something by personal experience, we gladly take the opportunity. If not, we consult an expert. Sometimes, this drive to understand can leave a person with egg on his face when he realizes he should have taken an expert’s word for it.
“If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.”
American playwright Wilson Mizner brings us this gem that students everywhere will be able to identify with. Mizner notes that in a standard academic paper, students are not usually presenting their own ideas— they are presenting the ideas of other people. In a sense, this can be viewed as a form of stealing ideas. However, it only becomes a problem with university faculty when students steal from one author.
“We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.”
Robert Wilensky, a former professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, uttered this line in a 1996 speech. He makes the joke in reference to the Infinite Monkey Theorem, a probability theory that states something that produces a random string of characters (“a monkey with a typewriter”) will write Shakespeare’s complete works by pure chance, given enough time. In this witty quote, Wilensky compares Internet users to monkeys. A quick search of YouTube comment threads will reveal that Wilensky’s comparison is not necessarily unfounded. Being bored at work can feel like torture. These four hilarious quotes have been hand-selected from the Top 100 Funny Quotes of All Time in order to ease your pain. If business is a little slow, take advantage of your lunch break to pass these quotes around. Your boredom will disappear.
image source: quoto
