Satire Quotes

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.

Praise to the undeserving is severe satire.

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

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

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

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

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

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

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.

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

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

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

Satire is tragedy plus time.

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

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

One easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.

Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire.

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.

Satire, like conscience, reminds us of what we often wish to forget.

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

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

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

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

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.

Hollywood is horrible... it's beyond satire.

It is difficult not to write satire.

Satire is focused bitterness.

You must not think that a satiric style allows of scandalous and brutish words; the better sort abhor scurrility.

Satire is what closes on Saturday night.

Satire is what closes Saturday night.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satire is the disease of art.

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

Satirists do expose their own ill nature.

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

A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

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

One man's pointlessness is another's barbed satire.

Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.

Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.

Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.

Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.

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