Comedy Satire Quotes & Sayings

The tagline behind "House of Lies" is funny, dirty, business. The show is a comedy satire about how big business operates. Most Americans that work in corporate America should be able to relate to this show. — Larenz Tate

Tobak Davenport, who is a cross between some Sugar Puffs and Lynn Faulds-Wood, was squatting there before being removed by the local constabulary after he went round to complain about Luther Blisset's pet turkey fouling the communal herb garden. — St John Morris

I can fly around the world in one night. I can wink and go up a chimney in a split second. I can be in 500 shopping malls on the same weekend. I can even fit enough gifts for the entire world into one tiny sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer, but I CANNOT FIX THIS CONFOUNDED COMPUTER! — Bobbi A. Chukran

The verdict of this court is that the accused are guilty of witchcraft. The maximum penalty the law allows is to be burned to death.However, in view of your previous good background I am disposed to be lenient. I therefore sentence you to be burned alive. — Richard Curtis

When a sex tape gets made a star is born with a publicity agent on speed dial a six figure payout and a line of tacky lingerie in the works — Saira Viola

They did it quite a lot after that first encounter" ... when Jill remembers first meeting the dashing Baron. — Lisa McKnight

His knees were held together by the skin-tight trousers, which consequently narrowed the aperture through which great quantities of malodorous, rancid dreck were shortly to emerge with great force. St John knew that this was likely to prove troublesome. Although his mid-morning bab was usually undertaken in a more perfunctory manner, he would still have been mindful enough to ensure that his trousers were well below the knee before he commenced the disagreeable act, but in his current predicament, he was in no state to dally. — St John Morris

You little prick. It's a whelk ... it's a ... it's a ... dead whelk! — St John Morris

I'll read to you," Elizabeth said. "Any preferences?" "Evelyn Waugh." "Really? How strange." "That's what Konrad said. He said Waugh is for readers who know the English and understand what's being satirised. And I told him that maybe the books are better when you don't know it's satire and just think it's comedy." Elizabeth considered this. "You're probably right. I find him much too cruel. And almost unbearably sad." Hiroko's — Kamila Shamsie

By the standards of a tourist strolling past looking for a quick lunch, the place was a dive. The sign on the window was small and easy to miss, and the antique feel of the place wasn't the prepackaged, old-shit-on-the-wall nostalgia that came with so many chain restaurants. The cafe was just old, and everything about it said old. But Jon liked it that way, if only because it kept the tourists away and spared him from hearing imported ignorance when there was plenty of local ignorance to go around. — Scott B. Pruden

Your toaster's a puff. — St John Morris

But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine. — Jerry Zucker

Status is always ripe for satire, status is always good for comedy. — Stephen Colbert

He had also spent a day and a half without sleep trying to start an online petition to bring back the advert for Nationwide Building Society which said Dunroamin, twice, but half the through the second day of the campaign he had realised that it was an anachronism and the internet was about fourteen years away from mass consumption, so he stopped and went to sleep. — St John Morris

I love the satire and skewering of comedy writing. — Kristin Gore

Art has no immediate future because all art is collective and there is no more collective life(there are only dead collections of people), and also because of this breaking of the true pact between the body and the soul. Greek art coincided with the beginning of geometry and with athleticism, the art of the Middle Ages with the craftsmen's guilds, the art of the Renaissance with the beginning of mechanics, etc ... Since 1914 there has been a complete cut. Even comedy is almost impossible. There is only room for satire (when was it easier to understand Juvenal?). Art will never be reborn except from amidst a general anarchy - it will be epic no doubt, because affliction will have simplified a great many things ... It is therefore quite useless for you to envy Leonardo or Bach. Greatness in our times must take a different course. Moreover it can only be solitary, obscure and without an echo ... (but without an echo, no art). — Simone Weil

I remember reading Dave Barry for the first time and being like oh my God I can't believe you can do this. Watching Mel Brooks and Monty Python and SNL and all that stuff really informed me as a writer and then at high school I started a satire magazine and the college like The Lampoon really introduced me to like you know a lot of very like-minded people who really wanted to like comedy was the center of their lives. — Nicholas Stoller

I think comedy and satire are a very important part of democracy, and it's important we are able to laugh at the idiosyncrasies or the follies or vanities of people in power. — Rory Bremner

Make your life the greatest story ever told! — Marie Guillaume

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. — Oscar Wilde

When you see a culture where the intellectual architects of the invasion are not shamed for their behavior but rewarded within the mainstream media culture, black comedy, satire, absurdism is the only response. — John Cusack

Some readers took 'Heaven's My Destination' as a satire on Christianity and the Midwest, but today it reads like a loving comedy. — Robert Gottlieb

Only in California could the night air be lit not by fireflies, but radioactive porn star cumshots. — C.Z. Hazard

The ultimate downfall of the computerized holographic receptionist was that there was no amount of flattery, flirtation or chocolate that could convince one to lie for you. — Scott B. Pruden

This particular event had been somewhat more raucous than usual as Derek Jameson had just lost an arm wrestle with Ann Diamond. The match was the second semi-final of the morning after Belinda Carlisle had been pipped at the post by Rusty Lee. Carlisle had caused some consternation after, upset at losing and forfeiting the chance to compete for the first prize of a quarter of midget gems, she had spat port in Lee's handbag. Carlisle had been asked to leave and, after a brief tussle, had been ejected from the building whilst screaming and spitting in Simon Parkin's face. — St John Morris

When a man says he sees nothing in a book, he very often means that he does not see himself in it: which, if it is not a comedy or a satire, is likely enough. — Augustus William Hare

Private Benjamin lives next door but one to Bob Cryer from The Bill. I once saw him crouching down behind a sycamore tree and using his nose as an Allen Key to release a starving rat. — St John Morris

St John had always been a fan of the RS Turbo, mainly due to the colour coded rear spoiler and air vents in the bonnet, which distinguished it from the more common and less powerful XR3i. — St John Morris

-"He loved her ... It was noble of him. It was beautiful."
-"It was stupid. — Lloyd Alexander

With him big Phil from Notting Hill an old "face" from the sixties a pin up gangster with a "mars bar" weal scraping his left cheek and of course two "wag" slags in tow trussed up like French Poodles with "Bratz babe" stares and Gucci Handbags — Saira Viola

I try and write satire that's well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can't be completely clear, and that's what makes it comedy. — Bo Burnham

St John had been sitting in the back garden twizzling a pencil, on the end of which a russet deposit was impaled, which had been left on the lawn by Marmaduke, next door's ginger cat. His father had wandered in to the garden and seen St John mesmerised by the twirling mahogany baton.
"What are you doing son?" he asked.
"Toasting a witch", St John replied. — St John Morris

In Chestnut Hill money didn't talk, but it drank, and played a lot of golf. — Alistair McHarg

The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality. — Henry James

Percy, you are dismissed from my service."
"Me? Why, my lord?"
"Why? Because, Percy, far from being a fit consort for a prince of the realm, you would bore the leggings off a village idiot. You ride a horse rather less well than another horse would. Your brain would make a grain of sand look large and ungainly, and the part of you that can't be mentioned, I am reliably informed by women around the court, wouldn't be worth mentioning even if it could be. If you put on a floppy hat and a funny codpiece, you might just get by as a fool, but since you wouldn't know a joke if it got up and gave you a haircut, I doubt it. That's why you're dismissed."
"Oh, I see."
"And as for you, Baldrick ... "
"Yes."
"You're out, too. — Richard Curtis

I came to Hollywood originally writing comedy and writing satire. — Stephen Gaghan

When you have satire, it has to be real. No matter how outrageous the comedy becomes, you have to believe in the characters. — Kevin Kline

There was Arctic John, a businessman from Salisbury who doesn't hold water, Bruce Knott, a social worker from Cumberland who spends his lunch hour picking his bum, and Judith Glycerine, the reformation pig. — St John Morris

Comedy is very interesting because you can very quickly cross into dangerous territory. I mean look at what happened, unfortunately, (in) Paris a couple of weeks ago. They were making comics - which were really satire - but it offended people. I'm not saying the reaction was justified but there's definitely a line when you're doing comedy or satire and how it might affect somebody. That's the thing you have to watch and I think you have to be respectful of it. — Corbin Bernsen

The Macedonian Endeavour Channel was screening live coverage of the world series of the Who's Got the Stupidest Name (WGSN) competition. First prize had already gone to Brian Burdock, a French Algerian with a penchant for Longchamp. — St John Morris

He was learning that to win a fight like this, it was not enough to know what one was fighting against. That was easy. He was fighting against the view that people could be killed for their ideas, and against the ability of any religion to place a limiting point on thought. But he needed, now, to be clear of what he was fighting for. Freedom of speech, freedom of the imagination, freedom from fear, and the beautiful, ancient art of which he was privileged to be a practitioner. Also skepticism, irreverence, doubt, satire, comedy, and unholy glee. He would never again flinch from the defense of these things. p. 285 — Salman Rushdie

Run. Flee. Fuck off. Vanish from my presence and take the foul stench of your sordid secret with you. — St John Morris

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it. — Lenny Bruce

Human Millipede 6 was the highest-grossing movie of the summer and returned Nicholas Cage to Oscar-winning status. — C.Z. Hazard

Ah! good Sir! no Whores before Dinner, I beseech you.
[Love's Last Shift] — Colley Cibber

Next door but one is Quinlan Broddle, a Viceroy with a fear of gardens. So much so that he sold his garden to Virgin Atlantic and his erstwhile front lawn is now a runway where miniature helicopters and packets of crisps undertake sorties to 1940's Dresden where they have made several dozen unsuccessful attempts to rescue the Quaker Oats man, who is being held captive by the SS on the basis that his hair looks like ice cream. — St John Morris

...Mrs. Percy understood that staying beautiful all day long is the most important aspect of being married... — Tevin Hansen

Beetroot Cossins had moved to Kuala Lumpur where she had died of lethargy and pie. — St John Morris

A huge meringue with polio who drives everywhere in a beautifully restored Hillman Imp. — St John Morris

What you want to do is talk about ideas, you write a novel, you have a lecture about those ideas. Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized. — Justin Simien

Next door to the Bensons is Emmet Frag, a retired pacemaker who is credited with inventing the notion of happiness. He's currently working on a method for categorising ducks based on their singing voice. He's also the owner of the world's largest collection of tenor geese. — St John Morris

We may observe in humorous authors that the faults they chiefly ridicule have often a likeness in themselves. Cervantes had much of the knight-errant in him; Sir George Etherege was unconsciously the Fopling Flutter of his own satire; Goldsmith was the same hero to chambermaids, and coward to ladies that he has immortalized in his charming comedy; and the antiquarian frivolities of Jonathan Oldbuck had their resemblance in Jonathan Oldbuck's creator. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Oh yeah, well I suddenly realises that she'd only been with my boyfriend at the Co-op Christmas do when I were eighteen. So I grabs her head and I stuck it through a display of them Muller's rices and I told her. That's for shagging Kevin Cooper you stupid fucking cunt. — St John Morris

On the other side of St John's house is a fake egg timer who can't maintain an erection. He shares the property with a glossy beef burger called Tom, who has been painted by a seven year old magistrate in order to be entered for this year's Miss East Lancashire competition. Next door to them is a Dundee cake with a lisp. — St John Morris

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted. — Eric Idle

Nothing helps your partner keep his mind on Jesus more than having a sign of His love tanned on your primary erogenous zones. — Scott B. Pruden

Mishaque was a stouty blend of Irish "shrek" mixed with crazy Jafakain, his front was car dealing. — Saira Viola

Laughter is the best medicine — Chase Soundly

What have you got in there you little bastard? — St John Morris

Had the facial plumage been of a paler hue it would have looked like a pile of horse crap on a winter's day. — St John Morris

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear. — James Thurber

Was a combo of Sal Dali and Ronald McDonald. A fringe celeb wheeled out for Tv appearances. — Saira Viola

A good lawyer serves you from the cradle to the grave — Saira Viola

Eunice had deposited St John upon the balcony of the first-floor apartment of former Liberal MP, The Rt. Hon. Leonard Cossins, the disgraced Lord Mayor of Mitchell-Baines who had been removed from office having been caught administering counterfeit buttercup syrup to the local yeomanry whilst on a hunting trip to Stoke-Poges. — St John Morris

Her protestations were drowned out by the sound of Gordon Honeycomb barfing up aftershock into the kitchenette sink. — St John Morris

I gave you three proofs of witchcraft. A cat that drinks blood! A horse that talks! And a man who propagates POODLES! — Richard Curtis

A lot of people come up here and they thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. He didn't help me a bit. If it was up to him, Cesar Millan would be up here with that damn dog. So all I can say is, 'suck it, Jesus! This award is my God now'! — Kathy Griffin

Social media is basically standing at a bucket filled with other people's vomit and you suck the vomit through a straw, and gag and wince at the unbearable taste of other people's vomit. Yet strangely we continue to suck through the straw as if we've never tasted such lovely vomit. And then before you know it you're old and you're grey. And that's the end of you. A lonely death. Your gravestone is marked with the six saddest words:

Social Media Drained My Soul Away

And they all mourn your loss at a budget funeral service while updating their social media statuses on mobile phones apps. And in years to come nobody remembers any of your updates; even those updates that you deep-down believed were going to bring about world peace. The Digital Age is more disposable than nappies and just as full of shit. — Rupert Dreyfus

I once went to one of his Virgin Vie parties and had a really good time watching Chas having a paddy whilst trying to put on Dave's socks, before realising that he only had two feet, compared to Dave's three. — St John Morris

People keep making excuses, that's why everthing happens for a reason. — Roy Saputra