Disclaimer: This post is pretty old. I keep it around because I’m a sucker for continuity but don’t expect it to be useful, correct or even link to things that still exist.. -DH

Every so often, Reddit has a joke thread — and I’m always meaning to remember the best ones so I can be a hit at parties. Here are some of my favourites from most intellectual jokes 

All the standard disclaimers apply: some of these jokes are mildly offensive, a few require mild background reading and your definition of intellectual may differ from theirs.

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It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.

Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress replies, “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”

Q: What does the “B” in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?
A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

What’s good anagram of Banach-Tarski?
Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski.

Did you hear about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on technicality…

I’d tell you a UDP joke, but you may not get it.

I could tell you a joke about TCP, but I’d have to keep repeating it until you got it.

Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar. Heisenberg turns to the other two and says, “Clearly this is a joke, but how can we figure out if it’s funny or not?” Gödel replies, “We can’t know that because we’re inside the joke.” Chomsky says, “Of course it’s funny. You’re just telling it wrong.”

This sentence contains exactly threee erors.

A physicist, a mathematician and an engineer stay in a hotel.
The engineer is awakened by a smell and gets up to check it. He finds a fire in the hallway, sees a nearby fire extinguisher and after extinguishing it, goes back to bed.
Later that night, the physicist gets up, again because of the smell of fire. He quickly gets up and sees the fire in the hallway. After calculating air pressure, flame temperature and humidity as well as distance to the fire and projected trajectory, he extinguishes the fire with the least amount of fluid.
Then the mathematician awakens, and finds that the embers of the fire are still burning. After giving much thought to the problem, he gets up and lights it up to an actual fire. Then he goes back to sleep, satisfied that the problem has been reduced to a previously solved one.

Two kittens on a sloped roof. Which one slides off first?
The one with the lowest mew.

Why could Beethoven never find his music teacher? Because he was Haydn.

I sometimes regret that I never learned French but… that is life.

Pavlov is sitting at a pub enjoying a pint, the phone rings and he jumps up shouting “oh shit, I forgot to feed the dog!”

How many Marxists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None; the lightbulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.

Entropy isn’t what it used to be

According to Sigmund Freud, what comes between fear and sex?
Fünf.

Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin, and the Oort Cloud are riding on a train. Fidel Castro pulls an expensive Cuban cigar out of his pocket, lights it, and then throws it out the window after only a few puffs. Vladimir Putin and the Oort Cloud are both surprised by this and ask “what are you doing, Fidel? That’s an expensive cigar!” To which Castro responds, “in your country/post-heliopausal region perhaps, but in my country these are as cheap as dirt.” Then Vladimir Putin pulls a bottle of expensive Russian vodka out of his pocket and, after a few sips, throws the bottle out the window. Fidel Castro and the Oort Cloud are both surprised and ask “what are you doing, Vladimir, that is expensive vodka!” To which Putin responds “Pah! In your country/post-heliopausal region perhaps, but in Russia this vodka is as plentiful as rainwater. The Oort Cloud considers this for a minute or two, and then throws a six-mile-wide comet out of the window which, on impact, incinerates everything within a thirty-mile radius, causes massive earthquakes and tsunamis for thousands of miles in each direction, and kicks up a cloud of dust and ash that eventually encircles the Earth wiping out nearly all forms of life in a matter of months.

Lenin’s tomb is a communist plot.

Dean, to the physics department. “Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn’t you be like the math. department – all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper.”

Q: Why do KGB agents visit your house in groups of three?
A: One to read, one to write and another to keep an eye on the two dangerous intellectuals.

A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and says, “Five beers, please”.

What is the lowest energy state of a cow?
Hamburger because its in the ground state.

What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?

Heisenberg and Schrodinger are driving, and get pulled over. Heisenberg is in the driver’s seat, the officer asks “do you know how fast you were going?” Heisenberg replies, “No, but I know exactly where I am!” The officer looks at him confused and says “you were going 108 miles per hour!” Heisenberg throws his arms up and cries, “Great! Now I’m lost!” The officer, now more confused and frustrated orders the men outside of the car, and proceeds to inspect the vehicle. He opens the trunk and yells at the two men, “Hey! Did you guys know you have a dead cat back here?” Schrodinger angrily yells back, “We do now, asshole!”

The first rule of Tautology club, is the first rule of Tautology club.

It is known that a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
It thus follows by duality that a comathematician is a device for turning cotheorems into ffee.

A certain orchestra was performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Now, there’s a long section in that symphony where the basses have nothing to play — just rests for pages and pages. So one of the basses suggests to the others that they should go across the street to the local bar and come back when the basses have their next entrance.
Well, they take their time getting back, since they’ve had quite a bit to drink, and one of the basses is worried they won’t get there in time. “Don’t worry,” the first bass says, “I’ve tied a string around the conductor’s music. We’ll have plenty of time while he untangles it.”
They get in and take their seats, but they notice the conductor has this really intense look on his face. As well he should; it was the bottom of the Ninth, the score was tied, and the basses were loaded.