Irony Quotes - Page 14

• Caricatures are an important part of our culture of debate. They should defuse political spats through humor and irony. It is about making a strong statement but softening it with a wink. So Danes do not get too upset about caricatures. None of us is interested in insulting Muslims.

  Anders Fogh Rasmussen

  Strong, Political, Upset

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The irony is that musical artists have enormous public voices, but behind the scenes we're voiceless, actually.

  Sinead O'Connor

  Artist, Voice, Musical

  "Interview: Sinéad O’Connor Isn’t Bossy; She’s the Boss". Interview with Sarah Toce, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 28, 2014.

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• You yourself are participating in the evil, or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil for somebody. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation.

  Joseph Campbell

  Evil, Alive, Creation

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.80, Anchor

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• I hate irony, particularly when it is used because there isn't any message or to hide that someone hasn't any story to tell. Just like when someone only spews out a stack of cool words which don't mean anything and then has the gall to call it art. I always want to create a bridge between us and the listener, and I want it to be so that kids want to create for themselves a story or a context of the words.

  Jack White

  Art, Hate, Mean

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• In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Strong, Laughter

  "The Simple Art of Murder," Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1944

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• It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Bullying, Hate, Expression

  "Rushdie and After" by David Remnick, www.newyorker.com. September 16, 2012.

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• The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don't push it.

  Jamie Zawinski

  Maximum, Universe

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• The culture of irony is the culture of postmodernism, which I would furiously want to denounce. We have to act ethically and politically. Irony is a defensive position, against reality. It always knows what to think about reality. The idea of commitment and engagement is central to me, which is not ironic.

  Simon Critchley

  Commitment, Reality, Thinking

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• From the start, I've always admired Eminem's thinking. That's the reason I wanted to appear on the Grammys with him when I was asked. Eminem has the balls to say what he feels and to make offensive things funny. That's very necessary today in America, with people being muzzled and irony becoming a lost art. Artists like Eminem who use their free speech to get a point across are vitally important. There just aren't many people in the world with balls that big and talent that awesome.

  Elton John

  Art, Thinking, America

  "Eminem's Homophobic 'Rap God' Lyrics Spark Media Frenzy". www.hollywoodreporter.com. October 18, 2013.

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• Finally, a prominent nation is taking on the homosexual agenda and rejecting it outright. A number of African nations have done the same, but third-world countries are not newsworthy to mainstream media. The irony is stunning that a Communist nation would understand that preserving the value of men and women marrying and producing children makes for demographic survival, while many American Christian leaders cower in the shadows, in fear of activist homosexuals and their leftist supporters. I say 'cheers' to the Russians on this one. That nation will probably outlive America.

  Sylvia Thompson

  Christian, Country, Cheer

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• We lost faith in authority in the '50s, up to a point, and we spawned a lot of anti-heroes in movies, which were refreshing and open. But at this point, with the distrust that's there and the disillusionment with leadership that is so acute, we need some kind of a focus on taking the irony out and taking the anti-hero element away.

  Brendan Gleeson

  Hero, Focus, Needs

  Source: collider.com

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• It is an irony that the more possessive you are, the more love you demand, the less you receive, while the more freedom you give, the less you demand, the more love you will receive.

  Harold H. Bloomfield

  Love You, Giving, Demand

  Harold H. Bloomfield, Natasha Josefowitz (1992). “Love Secrets for a Lasting Relationship”, Bantam Books

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• The great irony of executive compensation is, if you pay your employees more, you're gonna create more demand for your goods and services! Which is gonna lead to more executive compensation than if you pay your employees less and try to take all the cream off of the top.

  Anthony Scaramucci

  Trying, Demand, Pay

  ""Life Is Unfair": Talking Inequality With The Hedge Fund Industry's Biggest Cheerleader". Interview with Hamilton Nolan, gawker.com. October 5, 2015.

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• Van Gogh was so under appreciated in his time, he sold only one of his 900 paintings while alive. Posthumously, he became one of the most famous artists of all time and his work is now considered priceless. Oh the irony.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Artist, Alive, Priceless

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• History, in the end, becomes a form of irony.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Ends, Form

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• I really think [the Bush Administration]'s foreign policy agenda is to spread irony through the world.

  Jon Stewart

  Thinking, Agendas, World

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• If I had to catalog all the moronic plot turns in The Day After Tomorrow, we'd be here until the next ice age. It's just so very bad. You can have a pretty good time snickering at it-unless, like me, you think there's something to this global warming thing, and you shudder at the irony of a movie meant to warn people about a dangerous environmental trend that completely discredits it. Is it possible that the film is a plot to make environmental activists look as wacko as anti-environmentalists always claim they are?

  David Edelstein

  Thinking, Ice, People

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• Like other magicians, Obama has chosen his distractions well. The insurance industry is currently his favorite distraction as scapegoats, after he has tried to demonize doctors without much success . . . . Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to 'keep insurance companies honest' - and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest.

  Thomas Sowell

  Doctors, People, Trying

  "Whose Medical Decisions?: Part IV" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. August 19, 2009.

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• The further humans move from hunters to horticulturists to agriculturists to urbanisation to industrialists, the further the sacred recedes, first to heaven, then condensed to monotheism and finally it dies in irony.

  Lierre Keith

  Moving, Heaven, Hunters

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• As a new president takes office and elevates global warming alarmism to official federal policy, much of America is experiencing record low temperatures. While the deep freeze amounts to little more than irony, Americans should nevertheless take what could well be a last opportunity to reconsider the cliff off which Barack Obama, Al Gore and the rest of the global warming industry want us to jump.

  Steven Milloy

  Opportunity, America, Office

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• It is one of history's great ironies that capitalists built decent and humane societies on the basis of an amoral approach to the economics of pricing, whereas socialists built exploitative and inhumane societies on the basis of a morally inflamed approach to economics.

  Kevin D. Williamson

  Economics, Decent, Bases

  Kevin D Williamson (2010). “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism”, p.22, Regnery Publishing

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• There is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about - irony, joy, human suffering, love.

  Mstislav Rostropovich

  Perfection, Joy, Suffering

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• It is an unfortunate irony that music-making intended in part to attract new listeners is usually the least well rehearsed and motivated.

  Bernard Holland

  Motivated, Wells, Unfortunate

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• The thing that I come across is that people think that I might actually be super aggressive, want-to-fight type in real life. The irony is that that's just not true, at all.

  Zoe Bell

  Real, Fighting, Thinking

  Source: collider.com

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• If you make exercise your hobby instead of your enemy it becomes your friend; it's the one thing that will never let you down. It will always be there for you and it will always make you better than you were before. Remember: every time you go to the gym, every time you put the right supplement in your mouth, you're better than you were ten minutes ago. [...] The irony is most people know what to do, they just don't do what they know.

  Sylvester Stallone

  Exercise, People, Enemy

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