Satirical Quotes

#Twitter: proudly promoting ghastly grammar and silly misspelling since 2006. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

I'm crushed by the responsibility of writing a satirical book. ~ Al Franken

My comic sense, although deliberately Americanized, is, in its intent, much closer related to the crazy wisdom of Zen monks and the goofy genius of Taoist masters than it is to, say, the satirical gibes on Saturday Night Live. It has both a literary and a metaphysical function. ~ Tom Robbins

You might as well laugh at yourself,
everyone else is. ~ B.J. Neblett

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

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

Well, I think that if you sincerely try to imagine what life is like for another person - not in a mocking way, not in a satirical way, but in a sincere, compassionate way - I don't think that's exploitive. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

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

I just think that the world of workshops - I've written a poem that is a parody of workshop talk, I've written a poem that is a kind of parody of a garrulous poet at a poetry reading who spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the poem before reading it, I've written a number of satirical poems about other poets. ~ Billy Collins

Girls About Town, another Paramount film, again directed by George Cukor, gave Kay the opportunity to work with her good friend, the irrepressible Lilyan Tashman, who'd previously appeared with Kay in The Marriage Playground. Kay and Lil got to run around in lingerie and play characters who could only be high-priced call girls. "Kay Francis shows off her figure in undies while explaining she's through with the gold-digger racket and intends going straight because she's found love with a rich rube. The undie pose and that bit about going straight all in one has its own satirical kick."43 Andy Lawler, who would become one of Kay's best pals, also appeared in the film as Kay's no-good husband. ~ Lynn Kear

The fictional work is a kind of actor that wears a satirical garb but can put on other costumes as well. ~ Will Self

Long ago I decided that at a political meeting the truth usually comes out in just such a speech or a remark ignored at the time because its tone is not that of the meeting. Humorous, or satirical, or even angry or bitter - yet it's the truth, and all the long speeches and contributions are nonsense. ~ Doris Lessing

Rejoice, Florence, seeing you are so great that over sea and land you flap your wings, and your name is widely known in Hell! ~ Dante Alighieri

Known for his prose as for his poetry. The subsequent fame of his verse is due in part to the many composers who set poems, especially those in the Book of Songs, to music. Hence his early, lyrical verse became known at the expense of his later, predominantly satirical verse, and his verse has in turn overshadowed his prose. Yet Heine's prose is as rich in humour, satire, wit, lyricism, and ~ Heinrich Heine

Muhammad Iqbal, who had spent three rewarding years as a student in Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century, now wrote of it in the satirical tradition of the Illahabadi:
The West develops wonderful new skills
In this as in so many other fields
Its submarines are crocodiles
Its bombers rain destruction from the skies
Its gases so obscure the sky
They blind the sun's world-seeing eye
Dispatch this old fool to the West
To learn the art of killing fast- and best
On his previous trips to the West, Liang, like Tagore and Iqbal, had been a qualified admirer. During his longest sojourn there, he began to develop grave doubts about the civilization that had so blithely thrown away the fruits of progress and rationalism and sunk into barbarism. The 'materialist' West had managed to subdue nature through science and technology and created a Darwinian universe of conflict between individuals, classes and nations. But to what effect? Its materialistic people, constantly desiring ever-new things and constantly being frustrated, were worn out by war, were afflicted with insecurity, and were as far from happiness as ever. ~ Pankaj Mishra

When I was younger, when I was a teenager, the work was more satirical and funny and cartoony. And part of it was chops - if you have a more limited repertoire of stick figures and cartoon characters, they lend themselves more to humor than to tragedy. ~ Eric Drooker

Satirical writers and speakers are not half so clever as they think themselves, nor as they are thought to be. They do winnow the corn, it is true, but it is to feed upon the chaff. I am sorry to add that they who are always speaking ill of others are also very apt to be doing ill to them. It requires some talent and some generosity to find out talent and generosity in others, though nothing but self-conceit and malice are needed to discover or to imagine faults. It is much easier for an ill-natured man than for a good-natured man to be smart and witty. ~ James Sharp

Poncho was in a red mood slanging with rage and needed to cook himself out of it , while shoving handfuls of salted peanuts down his gullet and slurping ice cold Fanta ~ Saira Viola

When I look at what I'm doing today, I see [the] roots in my college life. I was the online editor of my college paper and an active member of the Harvard Computer Society. I abandoned a summer internship at the Washington Post due to injury and instead did theatre. I found my comedic voice through satirical newsletters in college. ~ Baratunde Thurston

I've always agreed with the view that - with science fiction - its predictive powers were the least important or least relevant aspect of its public profile. I always loved stuff like Orwell's 1984, where he explicitly said "It's 1948, reversed." I liked writers that were doing allegorical, satirical, fantastical versions of everyday life. ~ Jonathan Lethem

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

I was greatly influenced by 'The Goons' and 'Monty Python' reconstituting what comedy was - it could come from a funny word, not just a set up and a pay-off. I liked the zaniness; they were satirical, slightly saucy and very literary in their references. ~ Sanjeev Bhaskar

Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few. ~ Paul Klee

He had read in the newspaper satirical remarks about initial-carvers, who could find no other road to immortality. ~ D.H. Lawrence

In my work, and in my psyche, there's some very sentimental, traditional, conventional side that's always in argument with a more radical, sarcastic side. Some of my stories are really sentimental, but they're layered over with weird, satirical stuff. ~ George Saunders

We are puzzle pieces, bragging about being puzzle pieces, rather than being the picture. ~ Tom Althouse

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

The inspiration comes from everywhere, from what I grew up with. There's so much silliness and nonsense in the world that we regard as normal working procedure. The satirical point of the view may be to counterpoint that. The way we look at classics has been hijacked by the intelligentsia - Shakespeare is highbrow and seen as something clever people do, which isn't right at all. I basically pull inspiration from everywhere. ~ Jasper Fforde

I wasn't playing Nixon's satirical stick figure. I was playing Nixon the man. As an actor, I felt I had to get to the deeply flawed humanity of the guy. ~ Harry Shearer

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

That's good," I said. "And if you have a nice time this morning on the sands with your spade and bucket, you will come and tell me all about it, won't you? I have so little on my mind just now that it's a treat to hear all about your happy holiday."
Satirical, if you see what I mean. Sarcastic. Almost bitter, as a matter of fact, if you come right down to it. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I'd suggest that what J R documents is the way that America is hollowing out the foundation necessary to even read a book like it, an America that teaches its children via closed-circuit television, an America that thinks democracy means owning a share of profit-maximizing publicly traded corporations. This is what it means to say that J R is about the conditions underlying the impossibility of its own reception. If there were a welcoming mass public for books like this, a public able to appreciate its beautiful difficulty and astonishing imagination, we wouldn't live in the sort of world so in need of savage satirical critique in the first place. ~ Lee Konstantinou

Let us be absolutely truthful for once in our life. We human beings are basically assholes. As time goes by, some of us become a little better - a rascal. But most of us live and die as we were, and are. Plain-simply, assholes. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Sadists are strangely the smartest, because they know best how to represent selfishness as socialism. ~ Subhralin Thakuria

Men ought to find the difference between saltiness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memory. ~ Francis Bacon

World opinion, though sharply divided on nuclear tests and the risk of atmospheric pollution, could congratulate itself on being united in its opposition to cannibalism. No country in the world was prepared to support the custom of eating the dead, though the right of governments to kill people, individually or by hundreds of thousands, was not questioned for a moment. ~ Leonard Wibberley

illustrated magazine: Nekrasov, 'the people's poet' (see note 15), was a contributor to Spark, an illustrated satirical journal published in Petersburg from 1859 to 1873. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted. ~ Eric Idle

Good Humor is the best shield against the darts of satirical raillery ~ Charles Simmons

Though no one recognized his strength, Anand was among the strong. His satirical sense kept him aloof. At first this was only a pose, and imitation of his father. But satire led to contempt, and at Shorthills contempt, quick, deep, inclusive, became part of his nature. It led to inadequacies, to self-awareness and a lasting loneliness. But it made him unassailable. ~ V.S. Naipaul

What are men to rocks and mountains?
April 1, 1816: The Prince Regent enjoyed Jane Austen's novels, but he requested that she try her hand at a historical romance with less satirical and humorous elements. Austen was not amused. On this day, she wrote to the Prince Regent, I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life. ~ Jane Austen

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

The late Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical American author, wrote: For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the beatitudes. But - often with tears in their eyes - they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ~ Philip Yancey

the Roman satirical daily, Il Don Pirlone ('Mr Dickhead', ~ Lucy Riall

I remember when America was strong. The situation that has arisen due to "The Interview" and North Korea's Kim Jong Un is bizarre! More bizarre is that the pressure worked - and the movie will not be released. This is a comedy - a satirical look at a serious situation. Rob Lowe was right when he said, "Hollywood has done Neville Chamberlain proud today," referring to the British prime minister who appeased Hitler. ~ Anonymous

In my opinion, Lenny Bruce was more of an influence on Zappa's satirical lyric's than anyone that I know of. ~ Jimmy Carl Black

Catch-22 is the greatest satirical work in English since Erewhon ... remarkable ... This is a book that I could wish everyone to read. It is a book which should help us feel more clearly ~ Philip Toynbee

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

The satirical direction I have chosen is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite way of saying that I have high expectations for the human race. ~ Jack Levine

Jason Mashak's SALTY AS A LIP is grounded in a voice patiently bridging the "steeples and 'scrapers" of an inquisitive mind. The poems are at once syllogistic, hard-edged, satirical, reflective, and finally as playful as love notes. The true joy of this book is that we are deliciously engaged in a "pantomime of pleasure" which the language and imagery generously evoke. ~ James Ragan

Rooms, corridors, bookcases, shelves, filing cards, and computerized catalogues assume that the subjects on which our thoughts dwell are actual entities, and through this assumption a certain book may be lent a particular tone and value. Filed under Fiction, Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a humorous novel of adventure; under Sociology, a satirical study of England in the eighteenth century; under Children's Literature, an entertaining fable about dwarfs and giants and talking horses; under Fantasy, a precursor of science fiction; under Travel, an imaginary voyage; under Classics, a part of the Western literary canon. Categories are exclusive; reading is not--or should not be. Whatever classifications have been chosen, every library tyrannizes the act of reading, and forces the reader--the curious reader, the alert reader--to rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned. ~ Alberto Manguel

There are so many problems to solve on this planet first before we begin to trash other worlds. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

I dreamed of the day when computer games would be a viable medium of artistic expression - an art form. I dreamed of computer games expressing the full breadth of human experience and emotion. I dreamed of computer games that were tragedies, games about duty and honour, self-sacrifice and patriotism. I dreamed of satirical games and political games; games about the passionate love between a boy and girl, and the serene and mature love of a husband and wife of decades; games about a boy becoming a man, and a man realizing that he is no longer young. I dreamed of games about a man facing truth on a dusty main street at high noon, and a boy and his dog, and a prostitute with a heart of gold. ~ Chris Crawford

I wonder if any of you have ever noticed that it is sometimes those who find most pleasure and amusement in their fellow man, and have most hope in his goodness, who get the reputation of being his most carping critics. Maybe it is that the satirist is so full of the possibilities of humankind in general, that he tends to draw a dark and garish picture when he tries to depict people as they are at any particular moment. The satirist is usually a pretty unpopular fellow. The only time he attains even fleeting popularity is when his works can be used by some political faction as a stick to beat out the brains of their opponents. Satirical writing is by definition unpopular writing. Its aim is to prod people into thinking. Thinking hurts.
(John Dos Passos, 1957, from the speech he delivered upon accepting the Gold Medal for Eminence in Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters) ~ John Dos Passos

I want to be part of movies that have important and interesting subjects but are not depressing and are rather satirical and funny. ~ Terence Lewis

Created sick, and then commanded to be well. This is one of the first, easiest, and most obvious of the satirical maxims that eventually lay waste to the illusion of faith. ~ Christopher Hitchens

In 1995, psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg coined the term internet addiction disorder. He wrote a satirical essay about "people abandoning their family obligations to sit gazing into their computer monitor as they surfed the Internet." Intending to parody society's obsession with pathologizing everyday behaviors, he inadvertently advanced the idea. Goldberg responded critically when academics began discussing internet addiction as a legitimate disorder: "I don't think Internet addiction disorder exists any more than tennis addictive disorder, bingo addictive disorder, and TV addictive disorder exist. People can overdo anything. To call it a disorder is an error. ~ Danah Boyd

All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor. ~ Samuel Johnson

'SCTV' was the concept of a group ensemble doing satirical things. 'Saturday Night Live's sketches were broader than ours, more universal. ~ Joe Flaherty

Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift ... The net result of Naked Lunch will be to make people shudder at their own lies, will be to make them open up and be straight with one another. Swift and Rabelais and Sterne accomplished a step in that direction, and Burroughs another. ~ Jack Kerouac

The importance of satire is bringing more people to the table. There are a lot of average citizens who aren't interested in politics and would be more interested if it's brought to them in a comedic, funny, satirical way. ~ Bassem Youssef

I don't try to be satirical. I just try to get what's in my head on the page. And that part is hard for me to do. It takes a long, long time to make it poetic, somewhat essayistic. ~ Paul Beatty

Preferring the nausea of the path to its fated and certain ending. ~ Patrick Bryant

Things are much more complicated. Feminism versus pornography, for example. There are a lot of feminists who think it is bad, but others think it's good. I have become, you might call it mature - I would call it senile - and I can see both sides. But you can't write a satirical song with 'but on the other hand' in it, or 'however'. It's got to be one-sided. ~ Tom Lehrer

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

You may be witty, but not satirical. ~ Horace Greeley

Ultimately, when I deliver something, a lot of times it will be from a black woman's perspective, but other times it will be just from a satirical, goofy perspective. ~ Jessica Williams

A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests. ~ John Dryden

Silence does not always mean acceptance, rather it can also portray arrogance. ~ Subhralin Thakuria

Tribal Chief 1: The will of the people is what is best. That is what democracy means

Tribal Chief 2: But if the people don't know what they are talking about, how can that be the best? ~ Leonard Wibberley

All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they. ~ Rudyard Kipling

One of the many problems with the concept of protecting religion from defamation is that ideas (including religious ideas) cannot be defamed - only people can be defamed. If governments feel that any idea must be shielded from scrutiny, questioning, or even ridicule and satirical commentary, that idea must be extremely weak, or alternatively the society in question must be repressive. ~ Dave Niose

They who suspect a Mephistophiles, or sneering, satirical devil, under all, have not learned the secret of true humor, which sympathizes with gods themselves, in view of their grotesque, half-finished creatures. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I'm not satirical in a traditional way. What I do is more about creating caricatures and cartoons. I am commentating on the nature of how we live through photography, and how you can twist an angle to create a different perception of a person. ~ Alison Jackson

Really, I protest
what is left for the satirical mind to invent when reality so surpasses it? ~ Jude Morgan

You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was "designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow "timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Whatever else she might be, she was not disagreeable. She was not coldly clever and indirectly satirical, but adorably simple and full of feeling. She was an angel beguiled. It would be a unique delight to wait and watch for the melodious fragments in which her heart and soul came forth so directly and ingenuously. ~ George Eliot

Like hell he was," said the first C.I.D. man. "I'm the C.I.D. man arround here."
Major Major could barely recognize him because he was wearing a faded maroon corduroy bathrobe with open seams under both arms, linty flannel pajamas, & worn house slippers with one flapping sole. ~ Joseph Heller

What is he to learn? To imitate? Or to avoid? When your friends the bees worry themselves about their sovereign, and become perfectly distracted touching the slightest monarchical movement, are we men to learn the greatness of Tuft-hunting, or the littleness of the Court Circular? I am not clear, Mr. Boffin, but that the hive may be satirical.'
At all events, they work,' said Mr. Boffin.
Ye-es,' returned Eugene, disparagingly, 'they work; but don't you think they overdo it? ~ Charles Dickens

This is really hard to do but I'd like to change the tone now and briefly mention today's terrible tragedy in France. Twelve people were killed because a satirical newspaper made jokes that some group found offensive. All of us are accustomed to bad news from around the world. But this story hits home for anybody who mocks anyone. ~ Conan O'Brien

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

His face looked shrewd and wise, as if he knew many things, many of them not worth knowing. ~ E.B. White

I have been told the best things in life are free ~ I found them very expensive. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

I don't think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, 'We need satire of them, not of us.' I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War. ~ Tom Lehrer

My personal success would be that people understand what I was trying to do. It was the most palatable when I watchmen_7_mdid Dawn. With Watchmen, too, I feel the same way. The movie's ironic and satirical and it's funny and serious and that's kind of the same way I felt about Dawn. Like I really was making a movie that knows it's a zombie movie and enjoys that and wants the audience to say, yeah, that's okay. ~ Zack Snyder

He was just like his father," Victoria Guzmán answered her. "A shit. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If you were sane, we'd both be mad. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

I'm all in favor of people - myself included - going into the same territory if there's something that can be done with it. But if somebody says, 'Make a sequel to 'Heathers',' I feel like, no, someone should make a good movie that's a dark, satirical comedy that has that sensibility. ~ Michael Lehmann

I think satire suffered under Obama, but not because of Obama. People are more sensitive now than ever, and strong satirical voices are stifled because of that. I don't think a Clinton presidency would change that. ~ Michael Che

Slanders, sir, for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging think amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. ~ William Shakespeare

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

We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States. If somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what's going to happen when they see a documentary they don't like or news reports they don't like. ~ Barack Obama

Mythographer was suggested by the man who made my website, actually. I do write a lot about myth and I do feel it's a bit pompous to state it that way, but it does distinguish me from other writers. When it was first on the web, people began to use it in an ironical and satirical way. Now, however, people tend to use it straight. ~ Marina Warner

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