Quotes & Sayings About Satirist

The political satirist usually votes against their own interests, but the bottom line is that it doesn't really matter. — Lizz Winstead

I wonder if any of you have ever noticed that it is sometimes those who find most pleasure and amusement in their fellow man, and have most hope in his goodness, who get the reputation of being his most carping critics. Maybe it is that the satirist is so full of the possibilities of humankind in general, that he tends to draw a dark and garish picture when he tries to depict people as they are at any particular moment. The satirist is usually a pretty unpopular fellow. The only time he attains even fleeting popularity is when his works can be used by some political faction as a stick to beat out the brains of their opponents. Satirical writing is by definition unpopular writing. Its aim is to prod people into thinking. Thinking hurts.
(John Dos Passos, 1957, from the speech he delivered upon accepting the Gold Medal for Eminence in Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters) — John Dos Passos

George Eliot makes us share their lives, not in a spirit of condescension or of curiosity, but in a spirit of sympathy. She is no satirist ... But she gathers in her large grasp a great bunch of the main elements of human nature and groups them loosely together with a tolerant understanding which, as one finds upon re-reading, has not only kept her figures fresh and free, but has given them an unexpected hold upon our laughter and tears. — Virginia Woolf

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

The Dark Satirist, like the Dark Knight - that could be a good name for a superhero. — Bassem Youssef

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

I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. — Charles Dickens

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

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

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

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

I've spent my entire career being a satirist. — Al Franken

But the most annoying of all public reformers is the personal satirist. Though he may be considered by some few as a useful member of society, yet he is only ranked with the hangman, whom we tolerate because he executes the judgment we abhor to do ourselves, and avoid with a natural detestation of his office. The pen of the one and the cord of the other are inseparable in our minds. — Jane Porter

I'm accused of, and perhaps rightly so, of not being mean enough. I've been taken to task in many a book review; a good satirist has to, you know, has to kill. — Christopher Buckley

Teain had no difficulty generating the indignation of a satirist. He lack the patience of a reformer. — H.W. Brands

Rory Bremner I have no problem with; he is a satirist, and a very funny one, too. — Richie Benaud

[On Jane Austen] She was fully possessed of the idealism which is a necessary ingredient of the great satirist. If she criticized the institutions of earth, it was because she had very definite ideas regarding the institutions of heaven. — Rebecca West

Minnesotans know the difference between the job of satirist and the job of senator. And so do I. — Al Franken

When [Imam] Samudra was tried, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, 'His lawyer, Qaidar Faisal, later delivered an official defence submission.' The defense summation praised the Taliban and its version of Islam and concluded with this telling detail: 'Mr. Faisal also quoted from American satirist Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men and other anti-western texts.' — David T. Hardy

I get very confused about being called a comedian, because when you say 'I'm a comedian,' people expect you to crack a joke. Maybe I use laughter and humour to make people think. I don't know what you call that - a humourist? A satirist? A pessimistic comedian? I don't know. Satirists can be very dark. — Bassem Youssef

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance. — Peter De Vries

The late great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British essayist, lecturer, satirist, and social observer, wrote in his autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), When one travels abroad, one doesn't so much discover the hidden Wonders of the World, but the hidden wonders of the individuals with whom one is traveling. They may turn out to afford a stirring view, a rather dull landscape, or a terrain so treacherous one finds it's best to forget the entire affair and return home. — Marisha Pessl

Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one ... of the main strengths of each. Each is attentive to clues, each must narrow the choice, must strive for precision. As George Grosz says, "In art there is no place for gossip and but a small place for the satirist." The objective is fertile procedure. Is it not? Jacob Bronowski says in The Saturday Evening Post that science is not a mere collection of discoveries, but that science is the process of discovering. In any case it's not established once and for all; it's evolving. — Marianne Moore

I think he is the ornament of society! Oh, there is not just one role for the artist in society. He has many roles and he has a different role as society changes, and in different societies . . . He can be a seer at times, and in the eighteenth century he was the satirist, the artist stepping back and holding up the mirror to society. Moreover, I don't think the same kind of person is necessarily an artist or a poet in one century as another. — Peter Taylor

The needs of the nation are not necessarily convergent with the needs of the deadline satirist. — Christopher Buckley

It didn't seem fair to me that Jon Stewart's rally didn't get the same kind of attention that Glenn Beck's did. Why was Beck's seen as checking the thermometer of the country, and Jon Stewart just dismissed as a satirist? — David Sedaris

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 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

It sounds to me, dear, as if your satirist is a bit like a monk. They both take a rather dim view of the world, and both try to do something about it."

"Thank you, Father Joe! I think I knew that once, but I'd forgotten. Contemptus mundi. We both have contempt for the world."

"You p-p-persist in your error, my son. Contemptus does not mean 'contempt.' It means 'detachment.' Are you detached from the things you satirize? — Tony Hendra

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 that criticizes religion is seen as a satanist. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

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

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

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

[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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A satirist is never certain whether he/she will be acclaimed or punished. — Edgar Johnson

I've known one thing for a long time: there's a role in the big machine even for someone who makes fun of it. — Christa Wolf

I love Washington. I have an affection for the place. For a satirist, I think it's sort of Disneyland. I mean, you know, there's always some inspiration in the morning's headlines. — Christopher Buckley

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

But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can't be part of the party. Meaning, you can't go horseback riding with Jackie O in Central Park if you're going to make a joke about her that night. — Joan Rivers

When Actions are a Censure upon themselves, the Reciter will always be consider'd as a Satirist. — Charlotte Lennox

The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Satirists do expose their own ill nature. — Isaac Watts

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'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

But in these modern times it may be decidedly asserted as a fact, that vice, in accomplishing the vast majority of its seductions, uses no disguise at all; appears impudently in its naked deformity; and, instead of horrifying all beholders, in accordance with the prediction of the classical satirist, absolutely attracts a much more numerous congregation of worshippers than has ever yet been brought together by the divinest beauties that virtue can display for the allurement of mankind. — Wilkie Collins

I would say I'm an ironist not a satirist. All you do is you take existing tendencies and crank them up, just turn up the volume dial. Which is a technique of science fiction, apart from anything else. — Martin Amis

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

VW used to mean FAHRVERGNUGEN and now it's FARFROMUNION!

Birgit Von Schondorf — Birgit Von Schondorf

A satirist, often in danger himself, has the bravery of knowing that to withhold wit's conjecture is to endanger the species. — Penelope Gilliatt

I first adventure, follow me who list And be the second English satirist — Joseph Hall

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

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

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

Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: "A judicious man," says he, "looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him." — Thomas Carlyle

Life is so absurd now that it is almost impossible to be a satirist in this era. — Fran Lebowitz

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