Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.
"Palm Sunday". Kurt Vonnegut's sermon at St. Clement's Church in New York City (1980), originally published in The Nation as "Hypocrites You Always Have With You", 1980.
