Top 100 Quotes About Satire
#2. Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.
James Thurber
#3. The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again!
Michael Flanders
#4. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, 'We need satire of them, not of us.
Tom Lehrer
#5. If there is a god, I think he has a sense of humour. He does not require human beings to protect him from satire.
James K. Morrow
#6. Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tom Lehrer
#7. To me, that's where a lot of satire lies. News used to hold itself to a higher plane and slowly it has dissolved into, well, me.
Jon Stewart
#8. Satire has a great big glaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center. Directness there must be and singleness of aim: it is all aim, all trajectory.
Wyndham Lewis
#9. I just make what I like - warm and human stories, ones about historic characters and events, and about animals. If there is a secret, I guess it's that I never make the pictures too childish, but always try to get in a little satire of adult foibles.
Walt Disney
#10. Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they're too deliberate.
Herb Caen
#11. We've managed to keep a spirit of fun, I guess, of urban satire and finding new and odd interesting angles to the ways of life to put on the stage.
Adolph Green
#12. When George Bush finally leaves the White House, the satire industry will briefly join the rest of the economy in recession. It will certainly be the end of an era.
Rory Bremner
#13. Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.
Simon Schama
#14. There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins.
Isaac Hayes
#15. Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.
Joseph Addison
#16. When television producers say it is the parents obligation to keep children away from the tube, they reach the self satire point of warning that their own product is unsuitable for consumption
Gregg Easterbrook
#17. Satire always benefits when evil and stupidity collide.
Gary Shteyngart
#18. You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.
Art Buchwald
#19. I think satire suffered under Obama, but not because of Obama. People are more sensitive now than ever, and strong satirical voices are stifled because of that. I don't think a Clinton presidency would change that.
Michael Che
#20. It is within the established American tradition of satire, if America surrenders on this point, the freedom of speech is a relic of history.
Pamela Geller
#21. Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
Anthony Trollope
#22. Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.
William Styron
#23. What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#24. It's supposed to feel good to throw a brick at the right people. There is a long tradition of naming and ridiculing and shaming and calling the villains what they are. Usually it was the artistocracy of the day and satire was the only way to speak truth to power.
John Cusack
#25. Through my satire I make little people so big that afterwards they are worthy objects of my satire and no one can reproach me any longer.
Karl Kraus
#26. Of all sorts of flattery, that which comes from a solemn character and stands before a sermon is the worst-complexioned. Such commendation is a satire upon the author, makes the text look mercenary, and disables the discourse from doing service.
Jeremy Collier
#27. I like to write a lot of satire.
Earl King
#28. A college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humor. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram?
William Shakespeare
#29. There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.
P. J. O'Rourke
#30. Difficile est satiram non scribere
[It is hard not to write a satire]
Juvenal
#31. I would play hooky from school and spend all day in the movie theaters. Consequently, I learned satire in all its subtle forms.
Nile Rodgers
#32. Whenever you feel like feeling like a devil's advocate, Bible-thump. That, in a worldly world, is the great irony and satire of evangelism.
Criss Jami
#33. Producing satire is kind of hopeless because of the literacy rate of the American public.
Frank Zappa
#34. I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted.
John Cusack
#35. Satire is the antidote to Pollyanna and Dr. Pangloss. It focuses our gaze sharply upon the the contrast between things as they are and as they should be.
Edgar Johnson
#36. A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and should make a due discrimination between those that are and those that are not the proper objects of it.
Joseph Addison
#37. You can say the dirty words now, but there is no content - political satire is limited to small podiums and little soap boxes.
Tommy Smothers
#38. A sitcom isn't usually the right tool for satire.
Chris Morris
#39. On the other side of that coin, and far outweighing it, is the fact that I've been able to use genre of Fantasy/Horror and express my opinion, talk a little about society, do a little bit of satire and that's been great, man. A lot of people don't have that platform.
George A. Romero
#40. A piercing satire, a poignant family drama and an investigation of the competing claims of honesty, loyalty, ambition and love.
A.O. Scott
#41. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine.
James Russell Lowell
#42. Ellison's Theorem: the further right your position, the less telling your satire. A corollary of which is that you can't lampoon anywhere near where you stand, because you'd annihilate your own troops.
Harlan Ellison
#43. When was the last time you heard a long passage from a novel read aloud during Sunday school or worship? Or how about the last time a youth pastor subverted his or her "talk" through satire or parable rather than proof texting the six main points? Yet
Sarah Arthur
#44. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire
Salman Rushdie
#45. Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.
John Dryden
#46. Organizations like the CIA and the FBI are still kind of supermen, kind of SS troops: We're blond and the best and everyone else should be incinerated. They don't know right from wrong. That's what makes a satire of these government bureaus really funny.
Mel Brooks
#47. I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early '70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire.
David Zucker
#48. I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me.
Tracey Ullman
#49. If Time have any wrinkle graven there; If any, be a satire to decay, And make time's spoils despised every where. Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life, So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.
William Shakespeare
#51. In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind! but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them.
Horace
#53. His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously.
John Charles Pollock
#54. Smart writers never understand why their satires on our town are never successful. What they refuse to accept is that you can't satirize a satire.
Hedda Hopper
#55. Pulp Fiction is a, uh, gritty, urban satire. Pump Friction is a uh-uh, a bunch of uh, dudes and ladies having dirty sex.
Norm MacDonald
#56. Satire recoils whenever charged too high; round your own fame the fatal splinters fly.
Edward Young
#57. As 'Possession' progresses, it seems less and less like the usual satire about academia and more like something by Jorge Luis Borges.
Jay Parini
#58. The tagline behind "House of Lies" is funny, dirty, business. The show is a comedy satire about how big business operates. Most Americans that work in corporate America should be able to relate to this show.
Larenz Tate
#60. The critics try to intellectualize my material. There's no satire involved. Satire is a concept that can only be understood by adults. My stuff is straight, for people of all ages.
Andy Kaufman
#61. I've written quite a variety of songs, everything from kids songs to political satire, and my dad covered a fairly large range, also.
Arlo Guthrie
#62. The Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture.
Ben Nicholson
#63. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes; what a satire this is on government.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#64. I came to Hollywood originally writing comedy and writing satire.
Stephen Gaghan
#65. Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python.
Alice Cooper
#66. Good satire is about attacking the powerful, and that tends to be more the purview of the left. Maybe there's something about the conservative mindset that confuses mean-spirited name-calling and insults with actual humor.
Tom Tomorrow
#67. 'As Long As I Know I'm Getting Paid' is a satire. Lyrically, I want to be direct. With my history in Fall Out Boy, there's some expectation that I'm going to be lyrically obtuse. But that song is a straight-faced satire of consumerism.
Patrick Stump
#68. It can take the uninitiated a minute to realize that 'Gangnam Style' is satire.
Evan Osnos
#69. Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet to run amok and tilt at all I meet.
Alexander Pope
#70. Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art.
Philip Roth
#71. Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.
Charles Lamb
#72. If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire. Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk.
Erica Jong
#73. A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.
G.K. Chesterton
#74. I believe that reappropriation can be a powerful tool for creating social change. Sometimes, things like irony, satire, or humor are more effective in getting at difficult truths or concepts like white privilege, orientalism, and the exoticization of culture.
Simon S. Tam
#75. Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion'. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.
Salman Rushdie
#76. What's great about 'The Daily Show' is I can use satire and push the envelope. I couldn't do that anywhere else. Even if I was a journalist.
Aasif Mandvi
#77. Overhead the sanctities of the stars shine forever-more ... pouring satire on the pompous business of the day which they close, and making the generations of men show slight and evanescent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#78. Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.
John Dryden
#79. Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers ... Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.
Angela Carter
#80. I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it OK to cry.
David Sedaris
#81. Satire also allows you to make fun of every different aspect. It allows you to make fun of both sides. It allows you to make fun of everything, really, so you can do it in a harmless way.
Neill Blomkamp
#82. Satire is enjoyable compensation for being forced to think.
Edgar Johnson
#83. Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire.
Carroll O'Connor
#84. I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.
Kate Christensen
#86. The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly.
Imogene Coca
#87. Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.
Karl Kraus
#88. Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it.
Karl Kraus
#89. I wrote an ITV drama in the 1960s, a satire on management theory that starred Leonard Rossiter. I'm also a poet and have had work in the 'Spectator.'
Maurice Flanagan
#90. Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard.
G.K. Chesterton
#91. Social satire has been around since people have been around.
David Walliams
#92. Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch our heads, think, do a double-take, and then think again.
Maajid Nawaz
#93. Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#94. I love 'Glee.' I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it okay to cry.
David Sedaris
#96. Unless a love of virtue light the flame,
Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame;
He hides behind a magisterial air
He own offences, and strips others' bare.
William Cowper
#97. Satire works best when it hews close to the line between the outlandish and the possible - and as that line continues to grow thinner, the satirist's task becomes ever more difficult.
Graydon Carter
#98. I love the satire and skewering of comedy writing.
Kristin Gore
#99. Though folly, robed in purple, shines, Though vice exhausts Peruvian mines, Yet shall they tremble and turn pale When satire wields her mighty flail.
Charles Churchill
#100. Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.
Jonathan Swift
