Status Updates From Fools Are Everywhere: The C...

“Nothing of the sort. I started because I'm mad about jesters and, knowing I could never match their sparkling, death-defying wit, I decided to give them the limelight they deserve.”

“It is all too often forgotten that the ancient symbol of the prenascence of the world is a fool, and that foolishness, being a divine state, is not a condition to he either proud or ashmed of.” G. Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form

“Yes, there were descriptions, confessions, portraits, and memoirs of jesters...... It is the histories that remain silent in the face of people from the dregs of society: whores, lackeys, convicts, galley slaves,... louts, pimps, rogues, crooks, beggars, and buffoons. It is the history of the "elite" that is left to us.”

Estebanillo González, Vida y bechos de Estebanillo González

...Man isn't man without talk, and talk's unthinkable without laughter. Yes, the world wouldn't be the world without talking and laughing. Ah, Cloth-Bag Monk, Maitreya the Laughing Buddha, my master! Yes, you're my master!”

Feng Menglong (1574-1646), Preface to the Expanded Treasury of Laughter, trans. William Dolby

“Some laugh at others and some are laughed at by others; those who laugh at others also become the butt of others' laughter while those who are laughed at in turn laugh at others. Ah, people will never stop laughing at one another, will they?... There's still all the rest of that one great treasury of the laughable-the whole world past and present with you and me in the middle of it as well, as part of the pabulum...

“Oh, to be a splendid fellow like this, self-contained, ready of speech, agile beyond conception, braving the forces of society, his hand against everyone, and yet always getting the best of it!”