Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.

Sevareid contrasts two failures of leadership. “Power without honor” is the obvious danger: authority unrestrained by ethics becomes predatory. But he adds a subtler threat: “power without humor,” meaning power held by people incapable of self-critique, irony, or proportion. Humor here is not frivolity; it is a civic virtue that signals humility, psychological flexibility, and an ability to recognize one’s own fallibility. Leaders who cannot laugh—especially at themselves—are more prone to dogmatism, cruelty, and the escalation of conflict, because they experience dissent as insult and complexity as weakness. The line implies that a humane society needs not only principled power, but also power tempered by perspective.