Quotes & Sayings About Irreverence

The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism. — Paul Krassner

[New Orleans.] Katrina changed everything. Life here is different, every face altered. Yet we feel and sense the landscape not only in its hurricane-leveled, sodden depressions but - perhaps even more so now in the strangely comforting depths of our shared history. Even in the worst hit areas, not all is dissipated. Dense intricate attachments burrow too deep to underestimate or overlook. This is no featureless town to be rubbed off the map and cast aside. Here the band plays on.

Our kindred colors speak to the values of justice, faith and power; to curious combinations of passion, openness, irreverence and loyalty, to the values of individuality, sharing and compassion. Not least, we still enjoy the sounds of music and respond to succulent foods, to the magnificent flowering gardens, to the elements of grace and dreamy escape, and to the languid Southern charm typical of faded days gone by. — T.J. Fisher

The Beatles did everything with down-to-earth humor, honesty, optimism, style, charisma, irreverence, intelligence, and a particularly spiky disdain for falseness. — Mark Lewisohn

Curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, a free and open mind, an acceptance of the relativity of values and of the uncertainty of life, all inevitably fuse into the kind of person whose greatest joy is creation. — Saul D. Alinsky

A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty. — Mark Twain

If there is any irreverence in my own work, I hope it is the irreverence I bear in mistrusting my own sincere self, which then sincerely mistrusts the irreverent me. If there is a bottom to this, I think it is a life's work. — Mary Ruefle

Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity. — Ambrose Bierce

It is the desire for irreverence as much as anything else that brought me first to poetry. The need to make fun of authority, break taboos, celebrate the body and its functions, claim that one has seen angels in the same breath as one says that there is no god. — Charles Simic

However common irreverence and profanity become, they are nonetheless wrong — Boyd K. Packer

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. — Brendan Behan

In my view, it's irreverence, foolish confidence and naivety combined with persistence, open mindedness and a continual ability to learn that created Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, Juniper, AOL, Sun Microsystems and others. — Vinod Khosla

What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

As with outlaw figures, in diverse musical and oral cultures throughout the world- Mexican corridos and Egyptian shaabi music, for example- Hip Hop's irreverence toward dominant values and noncompliance with the status quo creates alternative, counterhegemonic spaces. — H. Samy Alim

Rain is the subject of prayer, the kind gesture of saints. Dear City, explain your irreverence: in you, rain is a visitor with nowhere to go. Where is the ground that knows only the love of water? What are the passageways to your heart? Pity the water that stays and rises on the streets, pity the water that floods into houses, so dark and filthy and heavy with rats and dead leaves and plastic. How ashamed water is to be what you have made it. What have you done to its beauty, its graceful body in pictures of oceans, its clear face in a glass? — Conchitina Cruz

I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people. — William S. Burroughs

Every act of irreverence for life, every act which neglects life, which is indifferent to and wastes life, is a step towards the love of death. This choice man must make at every minute. Never were the consequences of the wrong choice as total and as irreversible as they are today. Never was the warning of the Bible so urgent: 'I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live.' — Erich Fromm

Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now, to quote myself at my most pretentious, is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste. — Tom Lehrer

If we had reverence for our life, our life would take at once religious form. But as it is, in our filthy irreverence, it remains a disgusting slough, where each one of us goes so thoroughly disguised in dirt that we are all alike and indistinguishab — D.H. Lawrence

Irreverence is a way of playing hooky and remaining present at the same time. — Mary Ruefle

On previous occasions when God incarnated on earth, the bliss of recognising Him in the incarnation was vouchsafed only after the physical embodiment had left the world, in spite of plenty of evidences of His Grace. But, ponder a moment on this Sathya Sai Manifestation; in this age of rampant materialism, aggressive disbelief and irreverence, what is it that brings to It the adoration of millions from all over the world? You will be convinced that the basic reason for this is the fact that this is the Supra-worldly Divinity in Human Form. — Sathya Sai Baba

The radicals are really always saying the same thing. They do not change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most incompatible crimes, of egoism and mania for power, indifference to the fate of their own cause, fanaticism, triviality, want of humor, buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the great practical power of consistent radicals. To all appearance nobody follows them, yet everyone believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honored pitch is G flat. The community cannot get that A out of its head. Nothing can prevent an upward tendency in the popular tone so long as the real A is kept sounding. — John Jay Chapman

We need to restore the spirit of irreverence in music. — Pierre Boulez

The 'gallows' are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism. — Arthur Koestler

Ours is peculiarly an age of irreverence, and as the consequence, the spirit of lawlessness, which brooks no restraint and which is desirous of casting off everything which interferes with the free course of self-will, is rapidly engulfing the earth like some giant tidal — Arthur W. Pink

What is bad luck? Opinion. What are conflict, dispute, blame, accusation, irreverence, and frivolity? They are all opinions, — Ryan Holiday

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity. — Ambrose Bierce

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense. — Mark Twain

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. — Jacob Bronowski

All reporters have a stripe of irreverence in their mental makeup. It usually keeps them from turning into toadies, a danger for those who associate, even in an adversarial way, with the rich and powerful. — Carolyn Hart

Irreverence, independent-mindedness and a hunger for far-off cultures have defined it {San Francisco} ever since people began streaming into the area in 1849 in search of new fortunes from gold, and a settlement of 812 souls became within two years a city of almost 25,000, many from China, Korea and Australia, clustered around more than 1,000 gambling houses. — Pico Iyer

One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack. — Tom Lehrer

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur. — Ada Louise Huxtable

Yeah, yeah, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye type of thing. There's that kind of irreverence to it the humor and in the reality of what's really going on that plays into this movie. — Jeremy Renner

For me the most fun of my career is to bring a little bit of irreverence to characters. And, you know, I don't think that the producers were expecting me to be as irreverent as I am. — Dean Winters

Sometimes life is irreverent, and you accidentally discover you are a party to irreverence, and it's hard to know what to do. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Irreverence ran on both sides of our family ... my parents brought me up to think we could all change the world. — Richard Branson

Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit. — Tom Lehrer

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. — Saul D. Alinsky

Pale hair fell in waves to his shoulders, framing a face mortal females considered a sensual feast. They didn't know the man was actually a devil in angel's skin. They should have, though. He practically glowed with irreverence, and there was an unholy gleam in his green eyes that proclaimed he would laugh in your face while cutting out your heat. Or laugh in your face while you cut out his heart. — Gena Showalter

I feel like my music stands for the ultimate statement of irreverence. — Kesha

True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god. — Mark Twain

One evening we were exploring the Baths of Caracalla together, while debating the question of merit or demerit in human behaviour and its rewards in life. As I was propounding some outrageous thesis or another in answer to the strictly orthodox and pious views put forward by him, his foot slipped and the next moment he was lying in a bruised condition at the bottom of a steep ruined staircase.
'Look at that for divine justice,' I said, helping him onto his feet. 'I blaspheme, you fall.'
This irreverence, accompanied by roars of laughter, apparently went to far, and thenceforth all religious arguments were banned. — Hector Berlioz

Christianity is such a silly religion. — Gore Vidal

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring. — Robertson Davies

Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him? — Henry David Thoreau

Live My Life provides a much needed shot of timely, thought-provoking, musically forward, irreverence to the status quo, — Nomi Prins

Does mankind truly hate itself? How can one surmount such irreverence? — Brom

Irreverence is our only sacred cow. — Paul Krassner

Have they [the agnostics] produced in their universality anything grander or more beautiful than the things uttered by the fierce Ghibbeline Catholic, by the rigid Puritan schoolmaster? We know that they have produced only a few roundels. Milton does not merely beat them at his piety, he beats them at their own irreverence. In all their little books of verse you will not find a finer defiance of God than Satan's. Nor will you find the grandeur of paganism felt as that fiery Christian felt it who described Faranata lifting his head as in disdain of hell. — G.K. Chesterton

It's that a bit of irreverence is necessary to have any self-esteem at all. Not irreverence for people, but rather, for what other people think. — Sherry Argov

Greatness is one of the sensations of littleness — George Bernard Shaw

Nevertheless, we cannot escape the suspicion that individuality might be inhibited by marriage, and we wonder whether people in open relationships might not really be braver than the rest - as if freedom were ultimately a matter of courage, of irreverence and honesty, of rebelliousness. — Daniel Bullen

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence. — Stan Getz

Irreverence not only shows disrespect to Deity but also makes it hard for the Spirit to teach us the things we need to know. — L. Lionel Kendrick

Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death for his irreverence. — Ademola Adejumo

The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator. — Eric Temple Bell

With a character like a Captain Jack, who can essentially set up these verbal land mines around him, and just keep passing the "absurdity ball" around and the "irreverence ball" around, and keep people guessing and keep people confused, there's great safety in that. Me, myself, personally, I learn from it. It's a real pleasure, and I do need him. — Johnny Depp

New becomes stale and old becomes fresh. The impractical, ageing estate long ago left behind to Singapore's pioneers and their homemade tofu stalls takes on a certain irreverence and originality; an anarchic streak even. It goes against the architectural grain. It stands out in a crowd, a rebel with curves. The reclusive behaviour only adds to the appeal. So the old place becomes "hip". — Neil Humphreys

How careful we must be not to think that God is less holy because others seem to get away with irreverence! We are sometimes tempted to measure our respect for God by the lack of respect surrounding us. The godless, however, are not our standard. God is. Through the pen of King David, God told us to "praise him according to his excellent greatness," not according to public opinion (Ps. 150:2 KJV). — Beth Moore

We can handle all European themes, handle them without superstition, with an irreverence which can have, and already does have, fortunate consequences. — Jorge Luis Borges

Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe. — Frank Herbert

Irreverence is a declaration of independence. — Barbara Sher