SATIRE QUOTES

quotations about satire

Satire has a great big glaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center. Directness there must be and singleness of aim: it is all aim, all trajectory.

WYNDHAM LEWIS

notes to Kenneth Allott, Contemporary Verse


Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

LORD BYRON

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Tags: Lord Byron


Satire is a composition of salt and mercury; and it depends upon the different mixture and preparation of these ingredients, that it comes out a noble medicine or a rank poison.

F. JEFFREY

attributed, Day's Collacon


Satire is one of the most powerful weapons of speech in a free society. It stirs the collective consciousness against oppressive governments and laws, rulers, the rich and powerful (look at Voltaire and the rich tradition of political cartoons in the modern world, all the way to the biting social commentary of freedom of speech warriors like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin), and moreover points a mirror at we ourselves as individuals: exposing the hypocrisies and frailties of our individual positions on issues -- hopefully getting us to see where others are coming from in how they view the world. Thus, satire also takes tremendous steps to opening up dialogue on the issues where it had otherwise been stifled -- penetrating that wall through a universal language of humor: if we are only willing to give a little introspection and laugh at ourselves.

WESS HAUBRICH

"In defense of Truly Free Speech: 'South Park' at 21", The 405, September 17, 2017


In-character satire is without question the hardest satire to perfect. You have to be an exaggerated version of the thing you are mocking, without inadvertently making the object of your ridicule look good or you look stupid.

SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN

"How Jordan Klepper will win the Trump Era satire game", Salon, September 30, 2017


Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Spring 1967

Tags: Vladimir Nabokov


But satire, ever moral, ever new,
Delights the reader and instructs him, too.
She, if good sense refine her sterling page,
Oft shakes some rooted folly of the age.

NICOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX

Satires

Tags: Nicolas Boileau


The true aim of satire should be, like that of our guns, making a good report, but wounding no one.

WILLIAM JABET

"Lines Drawn in a Circle by a Shakespearian Clown"


Political satire loosens the belt of those who need it tightened the most.

RACHEL FLYNN

"We should not be laughing at dangerous politicians", The Student Newspaper, September 28, 2017


Satire is a tricky business. Because a writer of satirical material is constantly skirting the edge of acceptance, he is constantly in danger of going too far -- especially in these days of "political correctness."

CHUCK AVERY

"Satire is not for everyone", Courier-Times, September 29, 2017


Undeserved merit is satire.

SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX

attributed, Day's Collacon


He that hath a satirical vein, as maketh others afraid of his wit, so he need be afraid of others' memory.

FRANCIS BACON

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Francis Bacon


If we cannot establish fundamental common sense and basic expression, then "satire" is nothing but emoji packs. Our lives will be full of it.

YOUSHANDABU

"Online Group Rules No Joking Matter", China Digital Times, September 26, 2017


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

G. K. CHESTERTON

Five Types: A Book of Essays

Tags: G. K. Chesterton


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 to get relief.

JOHN DOS PASSOS

Esquire, 1936

Tags: John Dos Passos


You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were.

ALAN MOORE

interview, "The Craft", Engine Comics, January 2005


Satire is protected speech even if the object of satire doesn't get it.

AL FRANKEN

interview, The Austin Chronicle, September 23, 2017


A single satire will sometimes effect more good than a hundred sermons.

PIETRO ARETIN

attributed, Day's Collacon


Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

JONATHAN SWIFT

preface, The Battle of the Books

Tags: Jonathan Swift


If satire is a reformative art -- and that will always be a matter of dispute -- it works for its reformations by way of deformations. In other words, it is a catachrestical art. And catachrestical for reasons of hostility and malice.

VALENTINE CUNNINGHAM

"Twentieth-century Fictional Satire", A Companion to Satire: Ancient and Modern