Quotes About Satire

Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much; yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire.

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.

There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs... begins.

The American public highly overrates its sense of humor. We're great belly laughers and prat fallers, but we never really did have a real sense of humor. Not satire anyway. We're a fatheaded, cotton-picking society. When we realize finally that we aren't God's given children, we'll understand satire. Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.

Satire must always accompany any free society. It is an absolute necessity. Even in the most repressive medieval kingdoms, they understood the need for the court jester, the one soul allowed to tell the truth through laughter. It is, in many ways, the most powerful form of free speech because it is aimed at those in power, or those whose ideas would spread hate. It is the canary in the coalmine, a cultural thermometer, and it always has to push, push, push the boundaries of society to see how much it’s grown.

Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art.

People are always looking for something to hate on. If this is something for them to target and hate on, that's their thing. I look at it as satire.

Anyone should be able to express themselves in any context. Obviously, there are arguments against appropriation, but it's one thing when someone is doing something for satire or making fun of a culture, but if they respects the tenets of the culture and they want to be a part of that, what could be more beautiful than that?

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

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.

Satire is tragedy plus time.

The feathered arrow of satire has oft been wet with the heart's blood of its victims.

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.

When we realize finally that we aren't God's given children, we'll understand satire. Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.

Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet.

How much truth is contained in something can be best determined by making it thoroughly laughable and then watching to see how much joking around it can take. For truth is a matter that can withstand mockery, that is freshened by any ironic gesture directed at it. Whatever cannot withstand satire is false.

Kennedy didn't beat Nixon. Satire beat Nixon.

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.

Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.

The highest genius never flowers in satire, but culminates in sympathy with that which is best in human nature, and appeals to it.

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

Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.

The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

Satire is what closes on Saturday night.