I was perusing Walt Kelly's Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eye Years With Pogo, his collection of comics and musings on the first decade of his strip; and I came across several little gems, many of which still have relevance over a half century later.
But there's one passage in particular I wanted to share, It probably pushes Fair Use, but I'll try to cut it down short. It's from the book's closing, in which Kelly muses on the role of the Humorist.
Laughter can ease. but it does not solve, our problems. That takes wisdom, patience and the time to learn both. The laugh is easier, for comedy can always be found in our aberrations.
The laugh signifies the delight of recognition; we know we have discovered the enchanted islands, the lands where we learn to not take ourselves too seriously.
...
It is only when we assume that we are perfect that we lose the ability to laugh at ourselves; and who else is there? Perhaps it is only the perfect, the well-ordered, the inhibited and the restrained who live lives untroubled by the erratic.
Certainly the lunatic fringe and the simpleton fringe are sources of danger and of laughter, but so are we ourselves. There is still hope and fun ahead. Tomorrow keeps arriving from the East and we keep on exporting yesterday.
He closes by quoting a passage he wrote for one of his earlier POGO collections, and which was the source of probably the most famous quotation from the comic strip.
It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.
There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we may meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us."