Quotes About Satire

The show is a satire, which gives us freedom to do anything we want. Satire is the magic word that wipes away any culpability. The media is jealous of this freedom.

Comedy is very interesting because you can very quickly cross into dangerous territory. I mean look at what happened, unfortunately, (in) Paris a couple of weeks ago. They were making comics - which were really satire - but it offended people. I'm not saying the reaction was justified but there's definitely a line when you're doing comedy or satire and how it might affect somebody. That's the thing you have to watch and I think you have to be respectful of it.

I love satire. Evelyn Waugh is one of my favorite writers of all time. He's hilarious. He's so wicked. He's so great. On the other hand, pure satire is an imitation. It doesn't really have any heart. It only holds things up to ridicule.

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.

A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.

I've never been much drawn towards satire of any kind. I don't like that style whereby you kind of stitch people up. But the deeper thing is that I just find these people so impressive and admirable.

I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say. Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them. I think if journalists start doing that then they won't be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won't be practicing satire.

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.

Making this movie as a period piece about a period that was very recent in people's minds. I was in Taiwan [during the 1970s], so I hope I did all right. Otherwise, it could be the biggest embarrassment of my life. Also, the story is not linear, it's patchy, like a cubist painting, and there is always the possibility it will not hold together, it will fall apart. The tone is part satire, part serious drama, part tragedy, all mixed together, and it has to hit an emotional core. That's also very scary.

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

When television producers say it is the parents obligation to keep children away from the tube, they reach the self satire point of warning that their own product is unsuitable for consumption

Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.

Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.

I came to Hollywood originally writing comedy and writing satire.

Praise to the undeserving is severe satire.

Satire is the disease of art.

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say "I have finished my life's work."

A piercing satire, a poignant family drama and an investigation of the competing claims of honesty, loyalty, ambition and love.

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.

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

It is, after all, far too easy to pinch and kick the bizarre Mormon Church; to say it's ripe for satire and parody is to say a Catholic schoolgirl is ripe for debauchery. It's like shooting polygamist fish in a barrel of coffee.

Satire always benefits when evil and stupidity collide.

There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

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