“Have you ever stopped to consider what has happened to your sense of humor? When you were a kid named Willy or Mary the one thing you did better than anything else was laugh. ... A strange thing called conditioned laughter began to take its place. ... [It depended on] financial conditions.
Political conditions. Racial, religious and social conditions.
You began to laugh at people your family feared or despised--people they felt inferior to, or people they felt better than..
.. You were supposed to guffaw when
someone told a story which proved that Swedes are stupid, Scots are tight, Englishmen are stuffy and the Mexicans never wash. You discovered a new form of humor based on sex... Your capacity for healthy, silly, friendly laughter was smothered.” —Dr Seuss