Elyot: (seriously) You mustn’t be serious, my dear one; it’s just what they want.
Amanda: Who’s they?
Elyot: All the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable. Laugh at them. Be flippant. Laugh at everything, all their sacred shibboleths. Flippancy brings out the acid in their damned sweetness and light.
Amanda: If I laugh at everything, I must laugh at us too.
Elyot: Certainly you must. We’re figures of fun all right.
— Noel Coward, Private Lives.
Also relevant:
…we have to…be able to laugh at ourselves – because if we can’t laugh at ourselves when you (sic) are standing on a pedestal (sic), somebody is going to knock you (sic) down.
— Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister’s National Day Rally Speech 2006.
