John Clarke - Honorary Doctorate of Literature Speech

They teach humour at this university... and it's name is philosophy.

– John Clarke recalls his thoughts after visiting a Victoria University open day in the 1960s

I've been lucky enough to work in a field which effectively didn't exist when I started at university, but which turns out to require a lot of the skills and instincts that I developed when I was at Victoria.

– John Clarke

One of the great delights of parties in those days in Wellington — and there were only parties, there was nothing else to do in Wellington at that time — was that at some point in the evening we'd all sing. We'd song every song we knew.

– John Clarke

...humour quickly became the major that I studied...

– John Clarke

...it was at Victoria University of Wellington in the late 1960s, somewhere between lectures in law, commerce and arts that his comic talent emerged and he began to make his name in student productions and revues.

– From the citation for John Clarke's Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Victoria University

With his comic energy and his incisive and independent take on the world, John Clarke cuts through to the innermost truths of society and politics in the Antipodes ... he continues to give real meaning to the words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — we should call every truth false that is not accompanied by a laugh.

– Citation for John Clarke's Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Victoria University