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
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
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
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
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
24.
It is difficult not to write satire.
Juvenal
27.
Satire is what closes Saturday night.
Juvenal
28.
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
29.
Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
Mary Wortley Montagu
30.
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
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
42.
I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me.
Tracey Ullman
43.
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
44.
Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays.
Edmund Waller
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