- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony. Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (5,984)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,722)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,517)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,850)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,609)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,810)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,751)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,617)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,036)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (3,002)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 3-Apr-20 - The Peter Principle (1969) | WIST on The Observer (1788).
- 3-Apr-20 - Peter's Almanac, "3 December" (1982) | WIST on (Attributed).
- 31-Mar-20 - Dave on “As O. O. McIntyre Sees It,” syndicated column (2 Jan 1937).
- 24-Mar-20 - Scott on “As O. O. McIntyre Sees It,” syndicated column (2 Jan 1937).
- 20-Mar-20 - Post, alt.fan.pratchett (14 Jun 1998) | WIST on (Attributed).
- 16-Mar-20 - Quoted in Washington Post (23 Dec 1973) | WIST on (Attributed).
Quotations about satire
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
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)
(Source)
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]
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.
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.
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)
(Source)
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)
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)
(Source)
Regarding proposed legislation outlaw "incitement to religious hatred."
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 fabulist
Twitter (7 Jan 2014)
(Source)
Regarding the mass murder at the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.
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)
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]
(Attributed)
