Laughter is the Best Medicine :.........

[Suraj Shah]

All are Funny...

[rajnish manga]

Niels Bohr, Physicist

After receiving the Nobel Prize in 1922, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr invited friends and associates to a celebration party at his country-cottage North of Copenhagen. The event was also well-attended by members of the press. One reporter, noticing a horseshoe hanging on a wall, teasingly asked the famous physicist, "Can it be that you, of all people, believe a horseshoe will bring you good luck?" Bohr replied:

“Of course not,

but I understand it brings you luck

whether you believe it or not.”

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Truman Capote, Writer

Truman Capote was fond of regaling people with an anecdote about one of his finer moments. At the height of his popularity, he was drinking one evening with friends in a crowded Key West bar. Nearby sat a couple, both inebriated. The woman recognized Capote, walked over to his table, and gushingly asked him to autograph a paper napkin. The woman's husband, angry at his wife's display of interest in another man, staggered over to Capote's table and assumed an intimidating position directly in front of the diminutive writer. He then proceeded to unzip his trousers and, in Capote's own words, "hauled out his equipment." As he did this, he bellowed in a drunken slur, "Since you're autographing things, why don't you autograph this?" It was a tense moment, and a hush fell over the room. The silence was a blessing, for it allowed all those within earshot to hear Capote's soft, high-pitched voice deliver the perfect emasculating reply:

“I don't know if I can autograph it,
but perhaps I can initial it.”

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Sir Winston Churchill
British Politician & Former PM

Nancy Astor was an American socialite who married into an English branch of the wealthy Astor family (she holds the distinction of being the first woman to be seated in Parliament). At a 1912 dinner party in Blenheim Palace—the Churchill family estate—Lady Astor became annoyed at an inebriated Winston Churchill, who was pontificating on some topic. Unable to take any more, she finally blurted out, "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee." Without missing a beat, Churchill replied:

“Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it.”

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Some insults are so witty and sly that the objects, in this case male chauvinists, may still not know what hit them:

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

—Dorothy Parker

However, some of the "targets" may be witty and sly enough to mount suitable rejoinders, as in this poem entitled "A Riposte to Dorothy Parker":

You're wrong—we'll make passes
At girls who wear glasses
As long as they're lasses
With cute, curvy asses.

—Joseph S. Salemi

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An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.

—Will Rogers

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

—Will Rogers

A fool and his money are soon elected.

—Will Rogers

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

—Will Rogers

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Our own Indian society is not the only one where prejudices against women have often held by the males. An example:

The stupendous epigrams above prove women's brains are every bit as good as men's, as they extract Eve's revenge at the expense of men's prehistoric prejudices. Here's my favorite epigram in this genre:

Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

—Charlotte Whitton

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Calvin Coolidge
Former US president


In a profession noted for windbags, the 30th U. S. President Calvin Coolidge was a politician of very few words, well deserving the nickname, "Silent Cal" (he once said, "I've never been hurt by something I didn't say"). Coolidge's taciturn style frustrated the many people around him who felt a man of his stature should be more talkative. At a White House dinner one evening, a female guest sidled up to the President and whispered in his ear, "You must talk to me, Mr. President. I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you." Coolidge whispered back:

“You lose.”

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Edna Ferber
Journalist, Novelist & Playwright


Edna Ferber worked for a number of years as a news reporter in the Midwest before moving to New York City in 1912. After her novel "So Big" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, she quickly followed up with the hit play "Show Boat" (so successful and financially remunerative, she called it her "oil well"). Ferber was fond of wearing tailored suits well before they became fashionable. One day, she arrived at the Algonquin Hotel wearing a suit that was very similar to one that the English actor Noël Coward was wearing. Ferber and Coward were friends (she once described him as her favorite theater companion) and Coward saw an opportunity to engage in a bit of playful badinage with one of his favorite people. Carefully looking her over, he observed, "Edna, you look almost like a man." Ferber looked Coward over in a similar manner and came back with a classic riposte:

“So do you.”

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John F. Kennedy
Former President



President John F. Kennedy and his father Joseph were once proudly watching JFK's daughter Caroline at play. As they sat side-by-side on comfortable lawn chairs, no words passed between the two men for quite some time. Finally, the elder Kennedy said, "Caroline's very bright, Jack." Then, after a pause, he added, "Smarter than you were at that age." The president adopted a similar thoughtful demeanor and, without looking over at his dad, said, "Yes, she is." Then, after a pause of his own, he added:

“But look who she has for a father.”