Satirical Quotes

• It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Distance, Government, Rome

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• Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

  Lord Byron

  Song, Sarcasm, Fool

  'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' (1809) l. 5

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• Good Humor is the best shield against the darts of satirical raillery

  Charles Simmons

  Humor, Shields, Darts

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• Since Christianity is in fact a slave religion, it is satirical at
  least to see the negro adopt a slave religion, after chattel slavery was
  ended. It simply underlines the fact that consciously or unconsciously, weak
  humans desire the status of sheep, no matter what they say.

  Tom Metzger

  Sheep, Desire, Slavery

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• You can't write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.

  Philip Roth

  Writing, Reality, America

  "Military Secrets" by Adam Gopnik, www.newyorker.com. November 26, 2012.

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• You cant be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.

  Tom Lehrer

  Offensive, Cant

  "Tom Lehrer" by Stephen Thompson, www.avclub.com. May 24, 2000.

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• The thing is, when you're kind of creatively self-employed, your brain just kind of chooses the path of least resistance, so if you really exhausted and you've had a long day, then that's typically when you might respond to emails or if you're on a plane and have nothing else to do, then you might listen to music and write these satirical pieces trying to explain the charts with music theory.

  Owen Pallett

  Writing, Long, Brain

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Believe, People, Novelists

  "Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups" by Robert Anton Wilson, (p. 16), 1998.

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• Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical.

  Joey Skaggs

  Fake People, Important, Twists

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• Jon Stewart is a dude who grew up in Jersey, hosted the show for 17 years, and created this new way of doing satirical news.

  Hasan Minhaj

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days.

  John Pilger

  Writing, Reality, Looks

  Interview with David Barsamian, progressive.org. July 16, 2007.

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• Some playwrights are obvious influences on younger writers. Arthur Miller (realistic, politically engaged dramas) and Christopher Durang (satirical dark comedies) are examples. But August stands apart, ... He has his special way of seeing things. I remember he and I were at one of those fancy benefits the Rep has. The gay men's chorus was singing, and I was very proud to have brought them into a Rep event. And August says, 'You know, I don't see any black people up there.' That was his focus the lives of black people.

  Daniel J. Sullivan

  Drama, Gay, Dark

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• Really, I protest-what is left for the satirical mind to invent when reality so surpasses it?

  Jude Morgan

  Reality, Mind, Protest

  Jude Morgan (2012). “An Accomplished Woman”, p.40, Hachette UK

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• After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Charlie Hebdo, Islam, Trying

  "How to Answer the Paris Terror Attack". Article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, www.metafilter.com. January 7, 2015.

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• Waiting for the Electricity is a wildly original and ambitious debut, a novel that tackles cultural clashes with satirical hilarity. I haven't read a first novel this promising since The Confederacy of Dunces.

  Jill Ciment

  Waiting, Ambitious, Hilarity

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• I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff.

  Pauley Perrette

  Stuff, Kind, Prose

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• It just happened that the public happened to, uh, appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.

  Rube Goldberg

  Crazy, Appreciate, Quality

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• The style, often found difficult in the earlier books, is just as individual but more perfectly modulated to experience, and the dialogue is much closer to contemporary idiom, especially when those cadences have been masterfully twisted to satirical ends.

  Geoffrey Dutton

  Book, Style, Cadence

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• My challenge as a satirical artist is how to present ideas to people to enable them to question and reexamine their beliefs. My hope is, that my work provokes people to look at things in a new way.

  Joey Skaggs

  Artist, Ideas, People

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• The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

  Renata Adler

  Sex, Philosophy, Loneliness

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• I don't think the nature of my poetry is satirical or even ironic, I think it's essentially lyrical but again I don't know if it's my position to say what my poetry is like.

  Kenneth Koch

  Thinking, Ironic, Lyrical

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• There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

  Renata Adler

  Philosophy, Littles, Cocktail Parties

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• Even though I had a great deal of respect for children's TV and theatre, it wasn't my intent to specialize solely in that area. I did indeed want to work on shows like "Sesame Street" and I am honored to be even a small part of that legacy, but I also wanted to do characters that had wider vocabulary and satirical humor.

  Stephanie D'Abruzzo

  Children, Character, Vocabulary

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• I've always had a fondness for that satirical, Terry Gilliam - esque evil corporate megastructure, the kind of business that hangs banners that say making your life better as it throws kittens into the gears.

  Chris Hardwick

  Evil, Gears, Kind

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

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• Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days. When you have someone like Cheney who talks about "endless war" or war that might last fifty years, he could be Big Brother. You have Bush incessantly going on about the evil ones.

  John Pilger

  Brother, War, Writing

  Source: progressive.org

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