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Richard Walker

The History of the One Line Joke (1LJ)

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 16 July 2020, 00:57

To be honest I couldn’t find much out when I decided to research early one liners. It's true maxims - pithy sayings - have a long history but they aren't usuallyĀ jokes. I managed to find this 1869 example from Mark Twain, and I think it squeaks in as a one-liner in the modern sense.

ā€œI must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week to make it up.ā€

A little modernisation and Tim Vine could adopt that.

Mark Twain was famous for witticisms. Here’s a rather misanthropic one I came across, but it made me laugh.

ā€œTo create man was a fine and original idea but to add the sheep was a tautology.ā€

He didn’t care for President Theodore Roosevelt (eponym of the Teddy Bear) either. Listen to this.

ā€œMr. Roosevelt is the mostĀ formidableĀ disasterĀ that has befallen the country since the Civil War – but the vast mass of the nation loves him, is frantically fond of him, even idolizes him. This is the simple truth. It sounds like a libel upon the intelligence of the human race, but it isn’t; there isn’t any way to libel the intelligence of the human race.ā€ (September 13, 1907)ā€.

Ooh.






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