Satire Quotations

I like to write a lot of satire.

It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control.

Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.

I think comedy and satire are a very important part of democracy, and it's important we are able to laugh at the idiosyncrasies or the follies or vanities of people in power.

I wrote my first play as extra credit for my fourth grade English class. 'Can Helen Stop Smoking' was a satire on the ill effects of cigarette smoking. My friend Vicki Haugabrook played as Helen and I directed the show. At the time, my brother Vince was leading the campaign to get our grandmother to quit.

The Irish and British, they love satire, its a large part of the culture.

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.

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

By the very nature of satire or parody, you have to love and respect your target and respect it enough to understand every aspect of it, so you can more effectively make fun of it.

I try and write satire that's well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can't be completely clear, and that's what makes it comedy.

Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they're too deliberate.

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.

You can't debate satire. Either you get it or you don't.

The modern form of things had begun to appeal to me, also (as material for satire) politics, and the lives of the great and little, high up in the social scale.

Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.

Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire.

Social satire has been around since people have been around.

If you're going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can't be politically correct when you do that.

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.

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.

There is a satire that exists in 'My Arm,' but there is also an honoring of some of the stronger ideas that I've raided from visual art.

I would play hooky from school and spend all day in the movie theaters. Consequently, I learned satire in all its subtle forms.

Status is always ripe for satire, status is always good for comedy.

I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me.

For me, my party views don't advance my narrative. Until I can find a way to write political satire like my idols Christopher Buckley or P.J. O'Rourke, I'll simply say what team I play for and leave it at that.

People love burlesque today because it incorporates all the old-school glamour, satire and highlights the female form -- it's something that many women can actually see themselves doing.

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.'

It is a satire of the first family, so I certainly studied her.

I think satire is a beautiful art and I'm still working at it. To me, it's more valid than straight news reporting.

Though slow to develop, terrorist humor has done all of this. Political satire has been particularly valuable in challenging the seemingly lockstep wartime outlook, reminding us that even in dire times it is always prudent to question authority.

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.

Satire is what closes Saturday night.

In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.

It is difficult not to write satire.

What is a miracle?--'Tis a reproach, 'Tis an implicit satire on mankind; And while it satisfies, it censures too.

Satire recoils whenever charged too high; round your own fame the fatal splinters fly.

If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up.

satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.

Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays.

Wyndham Lewis is basically a pessimist, thinking of human beings as doomed animals or determinist machines. His theory of satire is based on this view, and he finds plenty of evidence to support it in contemporary practice.

Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.

Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python.

Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.

We got turned down by a couple of other high schools who didn't necessarily want us to film a movie that had anything to do with drugs there. We tried to explain it was a satire that was anti-drug, but it was no good.

Bitter the jest when satire comes too near truth and leaves a sharp sting behind it

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little -- or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.

Both public and private television have been full of shows, opinion makers and people who attack Berlusconi or make satire about Berlusconi, often overstepping the threshold of truth and good taste,

Some readers took 'Heaven's My Destination' as a satire on Christianity and the Midwest, but today it reads like a loving comedy.

This has a lot of satire in it.

Satire and believability are irresistible to the news media.

Satire is particularly valuable in a country like ours.

Satire is traditionally a tough sell and the cynicism in it is one of the reasons for that. There are certain times of the year studios will release movies that they aren't confident about ... and the potential for business this time of year is huge.

Even if it sounds pretentious, which it isn't-I've found it artistically challenging to produce a monologue that is filled with laughter and ideas. It's a tough thing to pull off, but satire is better if it has conviction behind it.

It's satire it's my own twisted sense of humor, The Wizard of Oz.

In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.

But in terms of satire and comedy,our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.

I'll publish, right or wrong: / Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

Satirists do expose their own ill nature.

Satire is an abuse of wit. It corrects few evils.

The critics try to intellectualize my materiel. 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.

Satire is not a social dynamite. But it is a social indicator: it shows that new men are knocking at the door.

You could say it's a Hollywood film because the characters are agents, actors and managers, but it is not a satire like The Player.

There's a lot of humor and satire in that one.

It was clear to me that reality was catching up with satire so fast that somebody might read this essay on how to have the December 31 baby and obey it,

There's a lot of satire in Mardi Gras. We also take shots at ourselves. We may be down but we're not out.

I can see that inevitably people are going to point fingers. I think what is amusing is that people have found a lot more there than I even intended, ... I think in any satire about a prime-time soap, especially one starring young people, you're going to have the bitch. And you're going to have the narcissistic young actor. You're going to have the insecure girl. You're going to have elements of nepotism.

Satire is what closes on Saturday night.

Kennedy didn't beat Nixon. Satire beat Nixon.

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.

One easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.

All the satires of the stage should be viewed without discomfort. They are public mirrors, where we are never to admit that we seeourselves; one admits to a fault when one is scandalized by its censure.

Occasionally, the horrors of life in North Korea do show up in our American satire.

A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.

One man's pointlessness is another's barbed satire.

How do we get a pantomime cow on set. Jeez, the rigours of satire.

Satire is the disease of art.

Good satire hopefully provides thought-provoking conversation.

Satire is born of the cities it denounces.

A little wit and a great deal of ill-nature will furnish a man for satire; but the greatest instance of wit is to commend well.

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.

In general satire, every man perceives A slight attack, yet neither fears nor grieves.

Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.

Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.

Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.

If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses, and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history.

Satire is focused bitterness.

Satire is tragedy plus time.

I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted.

Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden

Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it.

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.

Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.

Satire that is seasonable and just is often more effectual than law or gospel.

Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.

The audiences like to think that satire is doing something. But, in fact, it is mostly to leave themselves satisfied. Satisfied rather than angry, which is what they should be.

Satire dramatizes better than any other use of it, the inherent contradiction of free speech that it functions best when what is being said is at its most outrageous.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire

Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.