Quotations about:
    satire


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Prepare for rhyme — I’ll publish, right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let Satire be my song.

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
“English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” l. 5ff (1809)
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Added on 29-Jun-23 | Last updated 29-Jun-23
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Satirists, be careful. In the 1931 film by René Clair, Vive la Liberte, a song says, “Work is freedom.” In 1940 the sign on the gates to Auschwitz said: “Arbeit macht frei.”

Stanislaw Lec (1909-1966) Polish aphorist, poet, satirist
Unkempt Thoughts [Myśli nieuczesane] (1957) [tr. Gałązka (1962)]
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Added on 29-Mar-22 | Last updated 29-Mar-22
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There is no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice in a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) Irish dramatist, satirist, politician
The School for Scandal, Act 1 (1777)
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Added on 23-Mar-20 | Last updated 23-Mar-20
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RIPPER: I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer
Dr. Strangelove (1964) [with T. Southern, Peter George, based on Red Alert by Peter George]
 
Added on 31-Jul-18 | Last updated 31-Jul-18
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That sort of thing wears thin — for when one’s cynicism becomes perfect and absolute, there’s no longer anything amusing in the stupidity and hypocrisy of the herd. It is all to be expected — what else could human nature produce? — so irony annuls itself by means of its own victories!

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) American fabulist [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
Letter to August W. Derleth (Jan 1928)

Regarding Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.
 
Added on 11-Apr-17 | Last updated 11-Apr-17
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It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Letter (1968-11-09) to the Smothers Brothers

Replying to a letter from them apologizing for making him the target of so much of their humor. More info here and here.
 
Added on 22-Feb-17 | Last updated 2-Aug-24
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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 (b. 1928) American mathematician, satirist, songwriter
Interview, Sydney Morning Herald (2003)
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Added on 7-Apr-16 | Last updated 7-Apr-16
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Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice but spared the name.
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
“Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift,” l. 459 (1731)
 
Added on 10-Sep-15 | Last updated 10-Sep-15
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For telling a good and incisive religious joke, you should be praised. For telling a bad one, you should be ridiculed and reviled. The idea that you could be prosecuted for the telling of either is quite fantastic.

Rowan Atkinson (b. 1955) English actor, comedian, and screenwriter
Letter to The Times of London (Oct 2001)
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Regarding proposed legislation outlaw "incitement to religious hatred."
 
Added on 8-May-15 | Last updated 8-May-15
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How important are free speech and satire? Important enough that people will murder others to silence the kind of speech they don’t like.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Twitter (7 Jan 2014)
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Regarding the mass murder at the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.
 
Added on 13-Jan-15 | Last updated 13-Jan-15
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Monty Python’s usual schoolboy humour is here let loose on a period of history appropriately familiar to every schoolboy in the West, and a faith which could be shaken by such good-humoured ribaldry would be a very precarious faith indeed.

(Other Authors and Sources)
The British Board Of Film Censors, Report on Life of Brian (1979)
 
Added on 12-May-11 | Last updated 4-Sep-16
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Here’s the way I look at it. President Bush has uranium-tipped bunker busters and I have puns. I think he’ll be okay.

Jon Stewart (b. 1962) American satirist, comedian, and television host. [b. Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz]
Interview, Rolling Stone (2006-10-31)
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On political satire.
 
Added on 16-Dec-09 | Last updated 24-Oct-23
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The show in general we feel like is a privilege. Even the idea that we can sit in the back of the country and make wise cracks … which is really what we do. We sit in the back and throw spitballs — but never forgetting that it is a luxury in this country that allows us to do that. That is, a country that allows for open satire, and I know that sounds basic and it sounds like it goes without saying. But that’s really what this whole situation is about. It’s the difference between closed and open. The difference between free and … burdened. And we don’t take that for granted here, by any stretch of the imagination.

Jon Stewart (b. 1962) American satirist, comedian, and television host. [b. Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz]
The Daily Show (2001-09-20)
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Added on 30-Sep-09 | Last updated 24-Oct-23
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Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
(Misattributed)

Not found in Twain's work, and the phrase "putting [someone] on" post-dates Twain.

The quotation actually appears to come from Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, The Peter Principle, ch. 7 (1969). Peter writes that during a lecture, a Latin American student named Caesare Innocente, said to him:

Professor Peter, I'm afraid that what I want to know is not answered by all my studying. I don't know whether the world is run by smart men who are, how you Americans say, putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.

More discussion: slang - What is the origin of "putting someone on" - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 30-Aug-24
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REGAN: Jesters do oft prove prophets.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
King Lear, Act 5, sc. 3, l. 83 (5.3.83) (1606)
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Frequently misattributed (with "often" for "oft") to Joseph Addison.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 29-Jan-24
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