Satire Quotes - Page 5

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

  Karl Kraus

  Fleeing, Arise, Objects

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• 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

  Government, Organization, Troops

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

  Edward Young

  Splinters, Fame, Recoil

  Edward Young, Sir Herbert Croft, Sir Herbert Croft (5th bart), Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Poems of Edward Young ...”, p.222

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• Okay well - no that is a very real thing seven-year-olds asking for BlackBerrys and cell phones and things like that. And that's one of the things I love most about the show [The Starter Wife] is the social satire.

  Debra Messing

  Real, Phones, Cells

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• What you want to do is talk about ideas, you write a novel, you have a lecture about those ideas. Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized.

  Justin Simien

  Writing, Ideas, People

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I don't want to just spend my life ridiculing something that I find ridiculous, although there is an element of satire in my work.

  David Shrigley

  Elements, Want, Ridiculous

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• 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

  Character, Looks, Flattery

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• For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Sympathy, Lying, Ebb And Flow

  D. H. Lawrence, Michael Squires (2002). “Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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• 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

  Freedom, America, Speech

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• Satire is an art best practiced behind the back of the intended target. I think inviting politicians on a satirical show becomes a very big trap. Because one of two things happen: Either you have to kind of unsharpen your fangs because you can't be quite as cruel to people to their face as you are behind their backs... Or you don't defang, and those guests get the word and they stop coming.

  Harry Shearer

  Art, Thinking, Two

  "How Harry Shearer Discovered the Soul of Richard Nixon". Interview with David Corn, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2014.

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

  Edward Young

  Miracle, Mankind, Reproach

  Edward Young (1839). “Night thoughts on life, death, and immortality. [Followed by] A paraphrase on part of the book of Job”, p.228

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• We have entered a period of intolerance which combines, as it sometimes does in America, with a sugary taste for euphemism. This conjunction fosters events that go beyond the wildest dream of satire- if satire existed in America anymore; perhaps the reason for its weakness is that reality has superseded it.

  Robert Hughes

  Dream, Reality, America

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• People are so sensitive about race that they can't hear someone speaking about their life in a very true way, or doing satire or political parody.

  Margaret Cho

  Race, People, Political

  "Margaret Cho: Laugh Lines". Interview with Katie Halper, www.guernicamag.com. June 15, 2015.

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• It has been said that the historian is the avenger, and that standing as a judge between the parties and rivalries and causes of bygone generations he can lift up the fallen and beat down the proud, and by his exposures and his verdicts, his satire and his moral indignation, can punish unrighteousness, avenge the injured or reward the innocent.

  Herbert Butterfield

  Party, Judging, Rewards

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• A fondness for satire indicates a mind pleased with irritating others; for myself, I never could find amusement in killing flies.

  Madame Roland

  Mind, Amusement, Killing

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• 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.

  Laurence Housman

  Littles, Modern, Social

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• THE DYING GAUL is a Hollywood satire. But Hollywood is not the real subject matter here. My play uses that world of high-rolling big money - that crazy-making business - to examine a whole range of subjects.

  Craig Lucas

  Crazy, Real, Play

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• The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines...I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them. And that's not funny....OK, well, if I say that, I might get a shock laugh, but it's not really satire.

  Tom Lehrer

  Song, Real, Writing

  Sydney Morning Herald interview, www.smh.com.au. March 1, 2003.

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• Of all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes; what a satire this is on government.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Debt, Pay

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• 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

  Stars, Men, Shining

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.30, North Atlantic Books

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• 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

  Self, Tactics, Shock

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• When you have satire, it has to be real. No matter how outrageous the comedy becomes, you have to believe in the characters.

  Kevin Kline

  Real, Believe, Character

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• If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.

  Carl Hiaasen

  Depressing, Writing, Hands

  "Carl Hiaasen: 'My humour has always come from anger'". Interview with Euan Ferguson, www.theguardian.com. March 5, 2011.

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• I like to write a lot of satire.

  Earl King

  Writing

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• I believe that pop culture is just, like, so ready for 'Watchmen.' We tried so hard to ride that wave between satire and reality, and all the things that make you still care about the character, but you don't miss the commentary about them.

  Zack Snyder

  Believe, Character, Reality

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