Satirist Quotes

A satirist, often in danger himself, has the bravery of knowing that to withhold wit's conjecture is to endanger the species. ~ Penelope Gilliatt

Any satirist writing a futuristic novel who had imagined a President Reagan during the Eisenhower years would have been accused of perpetrating a piece of crude, contemptible, adolescent, anti-American wickedness, when, in fact, he would have succeeded, as prophetic sentry, where Orwell failed. ~ Philip Roth

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him. ~ Italo Calvino

Good morning, Mr. Herbert!" I would say.
The point is debatable," he might respond.
Or, on another day: "Good morning, Mr. Herbert!"
"I will half allow it."
Or: "Good morning, Mr. Herbert!"
"I fail to see your argument."
Or: "Good morning, Mr. Herbert!"
"I find myself unequal to the occasion."
Or, my favorite ever: "Good morning, Mr. Herbert!"
"Oh, you're a satirist now, are you? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little - or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives. ~ Anthony Trollope

The needs of the nation are not necessarily convergent with the needs of the deadline satirist. ~ Christopher Buckley

The comic effect of the satire is derived from the simultaneous presence, in the reader's mind, of the social reality with which he is familiar, and of its reflections in the distorting mirror of the satirist. It focuses attention on abuses and deformities in society of which, blunted by habit, we were no longer aware; it makes us suddenly discover the absurdity of the familiar and the familiarity of the absurd. ~ Arthur Koestler

Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one ... of the main strengths of each. Each is attentive to clues, each must narrow the choice, must strive for precision. As George Grosz says, "In art there is no place for gossip and but a small place for the satirist." The objective is fertile procedure. Is it not? Jacob Bronowski says in The Saturday Evening Post that science is not a mere collection of discoveries, but that science is the process of discovering. In any case it's not established once and for all; it's evolving. ~ Marianne Moore

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist. ~ Quentin Crisp

I would say I'm an ironist not a satirist. All you do is you take existing tendencies and crank them up, just turn up the volume dial. Which is a technique of science fiction, apart from anything else. ~ Martin Amis

The political satirist usually votes against their own interests, but the bottom line is that it doesn't really matter. ~ Lizz Winstead

When [Imam] Samudra was tried, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, 'His lawyer, Qaidar Faisal, later delivered an official defence submission.' The defense summation praised the Taliban and its version of Islam and concluded with this telling detail: 'Mr. Faisal also quoted from American satirist Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men and other anti-western texts.' ~ David T. Hardy

I first adventure, follow me who list And be the second English satirist ~ Joseph Hall

[On Jane Austen] She was fully possessed of the idealism which is a necessary ingredient of the great satirist. If she criticized the institutions of earth, it was because she had very definite ideas regarding the institutions of heaven. ~ Rebecca West

I just think of people," she continued, "whether they seem right where they are and fit into the picture. I don't mind if they don't do anything. I don't see why they should; in fact it always astonishes me when anybody does anything." "You don't want to do anything?" "I want to sleep." -Gloria Gilbert

"Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief--that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another: "'Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever to mock the credulity of man. Let's persuade our more erotic poets to write about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over--and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world. "'Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people – that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. ~ James Thurber

When Actions are a Censure upon themselves, the Reciter will always be consider'd as a Satirist. ~ Charlotte Lennox

I think he is the ornament of society! Oh, there is not just one role for the artist in society. He has many roles and he has a different role as society changes, and in different societies . . . He can be a seer at times, and in the eighteenth century he was the satirist, the artist stepping back and holding up the mirror to society. Moreover, I don't think the same kind of person is necessarily an artist or a poet in one century as another. ~ Peter Taylor

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others. ~ Rebecca West

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance. ~ Peter De Vries

Teain had no difficulty generating the indignation of a satirist. He lack the patience of a reformer. ~ H.W. Brands

Blessed is the satirist; and blessed the ironist; blessed the witty scoffer, and blessed the sentimentalist; for each, having seen one spoke of the wheel, thinks to have seen all, and is content. ~ Christopher Morley

But in these modern times it may be decidedly asserted as a fact, that vice, in accomplishing the vast majority of its seductions, uses no disguise at all; appears impudently in its naked deformity; and, instead of horrifying all beholders, in accordance with the prediction of the classical satirist, absolutely attracts a much more numerous congregation of worshippers than has ever yet been brought together by the divinest beauties that virtue can display for the allurement of mankind. ~ Wilkie Collins

Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms - such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier - or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of 2 styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. Source: Wikipedia ~ Jonathan Swift

George Eliot makes us share their lives, not in a spirit of condescension or of curiosity, but in a spirit of sympathy. She is no satirist ... But she gathers in her large grasp a great bunch of the main elements of human nature and groups them loosely together with a tolerant understanding which, as one finds upon re-reading, has not only kept her figures fresh and free, but has given them an unexpected hold upon our laughter and tears. ~ Virginia Woolf

I've spent my entire career being a satirist. ~ Al Franken

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 think I'm more of an absurdist than a satirist. I think I'm more of a - humanist? I hate to say it! ~ Mike White

Life is so absurd now that it is almost impossible to be a satirist in this era. ~ Fran Lebowitz

What arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not, unless the man is a prig, the fact that people in positions of power or influence behave idiotically, or even that they behave wickedly. It is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a picture of themselves as so very sagacious, honest and well-intentioned. ~ Claud Cockburn

Grim grey-cloud morning . . . brightened up, for me at least, by the first review of my new novel, 'Billionaires' Banquet'. A tad early, but the Scottish Review of Books clearly just couldn't wait to share the glad tidings! Phew! Quote: 'Brilliant! . . . a suavely compelling, ceaselessly inventive entertainment . . . delivered with delirious aplomb . . . Butlin is both a master farceur and a merciless satirist.' Will be giving it a nervous first airing tomorrow at the Aye Write festival (treading the boards with the great Carl MacDougall). Fingers crossed, please! ~ Ron Butlin

I found that not having a public profile was not hurting the work, and it freed me up to be the satirist I wanted to be. ~ Garry Trudeau

The satirist isn't just looking at things ironically but militantly - he wants to change them, and intends to have an effect on the world. ~ Martin Amis

It sounds to me, dear, as if your satirist is a bit like a monk. They both take a rather dim view of the world, and both try to do something about it."

"Thank you, Father Joe! I think I knew that once, but I'd forgotten. Contemptus mundi. We both have contempt for the world."

"You p-p-persist in your error, my son. Contemptus does not mean 'contempt.' It means 'detachment.' Are you detached from the things you satirize? ~ Tony Hendra

I've known one thing for a long time: there's a role in the big machine even for someone who makes fun of it. ~ Christa Wolf

If you don't know Tom Lehrer, you should - in addition to being a classical pianist, mathematician, songwriter, satirist, researcher at Los Alamos and, he claims, inventor of the Jell-O shot, he is just delightfully funny and graceful. ~ Rachel Sklar

A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be. ~ Stanley Kubrick

VW used to mean FAHRVERGNUGEN and now it's FARFROMUNION!

Birgit Von Schondorf ~ Birgit Von Schondorf

I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin. If that ever happens, it's only because something happened during the interview that got me going, and then I had to translate my feelings to the mouth of the character. ~ Stephen Colbert

Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief- that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never...intended. So they said to one another: "Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever that will mock the credulity of man...We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over- and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Dark Satirist, like the Dark Knight - that could be a good name for a superhero. ~ Bassem Youssef

It didn't seem fair to me that Jon Stewart's rally didn't get the same kind of attention that Glenn Beck's did. Why was Beck's seen as checking the thermometer of the country, and Jon Stewart just dismissed as a satirist? ~ David Sedaris

Minnesotans know the difference between the job of satirist and the job of senator. And so do I. ~ Al Franken

I'd rather call myself a mischief-maker, an imp, rather than a satirist. Satirist sounds so self important. Plus no one is calling himself an imp right now. It makes me feel special. ~ Mo Rocca

Comedy to the Senate? Well, there certainly hasn't been a satirist or a political satirist who's done that. So, that really was uncharted territory during the campaign. But I think it's a good thing. Some people thought that it was an odd career arc, but to me it made absolute sense. ~ Al Franken

I love Washington. I have an affection for the place. For a satirist, I think it's sort of Disneyland. I mean, you know, there's always some inspiration in the morning's headlines. ~ Christopher Buckley

The most holy band of society is friendship. It has been well said, by a shrewd satirist, "that rare as true love is, true friendship is still rarer. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I'm not really a political satirist. I don't kid myself. I'm more interested in doing the mannerisms and the personality. ~ Rich Little

Some critics of my work took the view that a satirist should defer to the finer feelings of his readers and respect widely held beliefs. ~ David Low

A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief. ~ John Dos Passos

Spare a thought in 2013, this horrible horrible time to be alive, for the satirist. To satirise the self-satirising effluence that passes for populist entertainment and the pathetic vanity of a self-deifying movie industry is no mean feat in an age comfortable in its metameta cage. Being born into a system that values success, usually financial, above everything else, into an essentially worthless and spoiled world of governments happy to toss art aside in favour of financial dominance and petty power, gives the writer a subject, but limited maneuverability in his approach. To merry heck with the leaders who close libraries, theatres and community centres in favour of opening more retail opportunities and call centres to slowly mind-melt the populace. Fuck these zoot-suited capitalist cockslingers with their pus-filled polyps for souls. Because the only respite from the failed system in this failed First World is through literature - not through the ideologues, rhetoricians or motivational yammerers, but through the wonderous drug of fiction. ~ MJ Nicholls

The public is gullible ... If [many satirists are] making the same joke, that's the danger. Then there's a solidifying effect and it becomes a truth. ~ Bill Maher