Satirist quotes:

Send

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him. -- Italo Calvino
The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little - or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives. -- Anthony Trollope
A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief. -- John Dos Passos
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. -- James Thurber
I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin. If that ever happens, it's only because something happened during the interview that got me going, and then I had to translate my feelings to the mouth of the character. -- Stephen Colbert
Satirists do expose their own ill nature. -- Isaac Watts
Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love. -- William Hazlitt
Life is so absurd now that it is almost impossible to be a satirist in this era. -- Fran Lebowitz
The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged. -- Edwin Percy Whipple
I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin. -- Stephen Colbert
A satirist, often in danger himself, has the bravery of knowing that to withhold wit's conjecture is to endanger the species. -- Penelope Gilliatt
The public is gullible. ... If [many satirists are] making the same joke, that's the danger. Then there's a solidifying effect and it becomes a truth. -- Bill Maher
In the wake of the deaths of the satirists, Je suis Charlie, I am Charlie, became a slogan of solidarity for free expression around the world. -- Scott Simon
I'd rather call myself a mischief-maker, an imp, rather than a satirist. Satirist sounds so self important. Plus no one is calling himself an imp right now. It makes me feel special. -- Mo Rocca
A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be. -- Stanley Kubrick
It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him. -- Georg C. Lichtenberg
To be a satirist, at all events. The venom of Pope is what is needed. The sense of delight -- the expansion and the compassion of Shakespeare is no good at all for that. He is a bad comic. -- Wyndham Lewis
Any satirist writing a futuristic novel who had imagined a President Reagan during the Eisenhower years would have been accused of perpetrating a piece of crude, contemptible, adolescent, anti-American wickedness, when, in fact, he would have succeeded, as prophetic sentry, where Orwell failed. -- Philip Roth
I think the satirist is always basically optimistic. The satirist's complaint about society is always that it doesn't measure up to a fairly high ideal he has. I think that even the bitterest satirist, even a man like Swift, was probably rather an optimist at heart. -- John Dos Passos
If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist. -- Quentin Crisp
I read the best works of some of the best satirists, and indeed best writers from the beginning of the Victorian era to about the 1960s. If you want to be a blacksmith, you go and watch the blacksmith working, and you work out what the blacksmith does. -- Terry Pratchett
If I'm a cruel satirist at least I'm not a hyprocrite: I never judge what other people do. Neither a politician nor a priest, I never censor what others do. Neither a philospher nor a psychiatrist, I never bother trying to analyze or resolve my fears and neuroses -- Federico Fellini
What arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not, unless the man is a prig, the fact that people in positions of power or influence behave idiotically, or even that they behave wickedly. It is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a picture of themselves as so very sagacious, honest and well-intentioned. -- Claud Cockburn
I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say. Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them. I think if journalists start doing that then they won't be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won't be practicing satire. -- Adam Gopnik
When Actions are a Censure upon themselves, the Reciter will always be consider'd as a Satirist. -- Charlotte Lennox
I've spent my entire career being a satirist. -- Al Franken
Rory Bremner I have no problem with; he is a satirist, and a very funny one, too. -- Richie Benaud
Minnesotans know the difference between the job of satirist and the job of senator. And so do I. -- Al Franken
The political satirist usually votes against their own interests, but the bottom line is that it doesn't really matter. -- Lizz Winstead
I'm not really a political satirist. I don't kid myself. I'm more interested in doing the mannerisms and the personality. -- Rich Little
The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance. -- Peter De Vries
I think I'm more of an absurdist than a satirist. I think I'm more of a - humanist? I hate to say it! -- Mike White
In a more intellectually rigorous age, I wouldn't be talked about as a satirist at all. I would just be a topical comedian. -- Rory Bremner
Some critics of my work took the view that a satirist should defer to the finer feelings of his readers and respect widely held beliefs. -- David Low
I found that not having a public profile was not hurting the work, and it freed me up to be the satirist I wanted to be. -- Garry Trudeau
He has the obligation to society that any human being has. I don't think a satirist has any greater obligation to society than a bricklayer or anybody else. -- Shel Silverstein
Satire works best when it hews close to the line between the outlandish and the possible - and as that line continues to grow thinner, the satirist's task becomes ever more difficult. -- Graydon Carter
There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, 'look!' -- Carl Hiaasen
If you don't know Tom Lehrer, you should - in addition to being a classical pianist, mathematician, songwriter, satirist, researcher at Los Alamos and, he claims, inventor of the Jell-O shot, he is just delightfully funny and graceful. -- Rachel Sklar
Bret Easton Ellis is a social satirist; I consider myself aligned with how he does things. Bret doesn't write about that which he loves about the world, he writes about what disgusts him. You'd be a disturbed individual if you came out and said, 'I love these characters'. -- Roger Avary
Comedy to the Senate? Well, there certainly hasn't been a satirist or a political satirist who's done that. So, that really was uncharted territory during the campaign. But I think it's a good thing. Some people thought that it was an odd career arc, but to me it made absolute sense. -- Al Franken
I know that it's probably not a good idea for a comedian, especially a satirist, to support a public policy group or a politician. This is something I learned only too well years ago when I did a fundraiser for Pol Pot. A few years later I saw 'The Killing Fields,' and I've got to tell you, I just felt like a schmuck. -- Al Franken
I first adventure, follow me who list And be the second English satirist -- Joseph Hall
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself. -- James Thurber
A political satirist's job is to draw blood. I'm not so much interested in politics as I am in overthrowing the government. -- Mort Sahl
In a more intellectually rigorous age, I wouldn't be talked about as a satirist at all. I would just be a topical comedian." -- Rory Bremner
[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others. -- Rebecca West
I'm glad to be able to announce that the UK now has it's very own mindless twit. || Either that or he's a damn good satirist. -- Tim Worstall
The satirist isn't just looking at things ironically but militantly - he wants to change them, and intends to have an effect on the world. -- Martin Amis
Blessed is the satirist; and blessed the ironist; blessed the witty scoffer, and blessed the sentimentalist; for each, having seen one spoke of the wheel, thinks to have seen all, and is content. -- Christopher Morley
There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, look! -- Carl Hiaasen
She [Gypsy Rose Lee] was a sophisticated self-satirist with a contagious delight in the comedy of sex. She was coy; she was sly; she always had a witty quip; she had an intensely dramatic presence. -- Karen Abbott

Send