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Satire Quotes

1.
Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.
Molly Ivins

Authors on Satire Quotes: Karl Kraus Juvenal Jonathan Swift Wyndham Lewis Tom Lehrer Molly Ivins Joseph Addison Alexander Pope John Cusack Edward Young John Dryden Moliere Ben Nicholson Franklin P. Adams Barbara Tuchman John Tillotson Laurence Housman Anita Brookner Moshe Kasher P. J. O'Rourke Gore Vidal Chris Rock Dario Fo Mary Wortley Montagu Nile Rodgers Salman Rushdie Barry Humphries Jon Stewart Harry Elfont Ann Coulter E. L. Doctorow Herb Caen Stephen Colbert
2.
Praise to the undeserving is severe satire.
Benjamin Franklin

3.
I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.
Salman Rushdie

4.
Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tom Lehrer

5.
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
Vladimir Nabokov

6.
Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.
Dawn Powell

7.
How do we get a pantomime cow on set. Jeez, the rigours of satire.
Mel Smith

8.
Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.
Molly Ivins

9.
All the satires of the stage should be viewed without discomfort. They are public mirrors, where we are never to admit that we seeourselves; one admits to a fault when one is scandalized by its censure.
Moliere

10.
Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.
Alexander Pope

11.
It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control.
Dario Fo

12.
When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
Jonathan Swift

13.
If you're going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can't be politically correct when you do that.
John Cusack

14.
One easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.
Moliere

15.
If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.
Gore Vidal

16.
Satire is tragedy plus time.
Lenny Bruce

17.
Satire is not a social dynamite. But it is a social indicator: it shows that new men are knocking at the door.
Jacob Bronowski

18.
All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay.
Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.
Theodor Adorno

19.
You can't debate satire. Either you get it or you don't.
Michael Moore

20.
Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire.
Carroll O'Connor

21.
The audiences like to think that satire is doing something. But, in fact, it is mostly to leave themselves satisfied. Satisfied rather than angry, which is what they should be.
Tom Lehrer

22.
Satire, like conscience, reminds us of what we often wish to forget.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

23.
Hollywood is horrible... it's beyond satire.
Yahoo Serious

24.
Satire is focused bitterness.
Leo Rosten

25.
It is difficult not to write satire.
Juvenal

26.
You must not think that a satiric style allows of scandalous and brutish words; the better sort abhor scurrility.
Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon

27.
Satire is what closes on Saturday night.
George S. Kaufman

28.
Satire is what closes Saturday night.
Juvenal

29.
The modern form of things had begun to appeal to me, also (as material for satire) politics, and the lives of the great and little, high up in the social scale.
Laurence Housman

30.
Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
Mary Wortley Montagu

31.
A little wit and a great deal of ill-nature will furnish a man for satire; but the greatest instance of wit is to commend well.
John Tillotson

32.
Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Alexander Pope

33.
In general satire, every man perceives A slight attack, yet neither fears nor grieves.
George Crabbe

34.
I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted.
John Cusack

35.
Satire is the disease of art.
Nicolas Chamfort

36.
The Irish and British, they love satire, its a large part of the culture.
Ben Nicholson

37.
Satirists do expose their own ill nature.
Isaac Watts

38.
If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up.
Barry Humphries

39.
A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

40.
In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.
Juvenal

41.
One man's pointlessness is another's barbed satire.
Franklin P. Adams

42.
I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me.
Tracey Ullman

43.
Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays.
Edmund Waller

44.
Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they're too deliberate.
Herb Caen

45.
Satire that is seasonable and just is often more effectual than law or gospel.
Josh Billings

46.
A satirist, often in danger himself, has the bravery of knowing that to withhold wit's conjecture is to endanger the species.
Penelope Gilliatt

47.
Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
Quintilian

48.
What is a miracle?--'Tis a reproach, 'Tis an implicit satire on mankind; And while it satisfies, it censures too.
Edward Young

49.
satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
Barbara Tuchman

50.
Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python.
Alice Cooper