Satirize Quotes & Sayings

Satirize wickedness if you must
but pity weakness. — L.M. Montgomery

Some people you don't have to satirize, you just quote 'em. — Tom Paxton

It's always harder satirize what you like rather than what you dislike. — Robert Mankoff

American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it. — Glenn Greenwald

Smart writers never understand why their satires on our town are never successful. What they refuse to accept is that you can't satirize a satire. — Hedda Hopper

But Americans have also exercised an additional option for decades: make fun of something. The Constitution does not guarantee Americans the right to satirize or parody, but it does guarantee freedom of expression and the right to bear arms. When those last two items are put together and sprinkled with a heavy dose of wit, Americans have created a form of humor that both ennobles and destroys its subject at the same time. — Michael Kantor

What most readers do not realize is that it takes a particular genius to write funny, to satirize. — F. Sionil Jose

In order to satirize adequately, I think you need to bring people down to Earth and be like, 'Yeah, these people drink coffee and have tummy troubles and they go to the bathroom like anybody else, and they all have relationship problems, if they even have relationships.' — Anna Chlumsky

I was not going to allow myself to really believe that I was free until I was actually free. — Anthony Ray Hinton

Should a writer single out and point his raillery at particular persons, or satirize the miserable, he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man if he could please himself. — Joseph Addison

Cubans joke and satirize everything that life gives them, and I think that's a positive characteristic. — Fernando Perez

No idea is above scrutiny. No idea whatsoever. To criticize, to scrutinize and to satirize my own religion [Islam] is not Islamophobia. — Maajid Nawaz

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

America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered. — Louis D. Brandeis

I'm trying to satirize what it's like to be a recording artist in 2011. I realize that standing on a soap box and ranting and raving about my opinions on the digital age and its effect on music is only going to get you so far. — DJ Shadow

In nothing is the difference between the Americans and the Soviets so marked as in the attitude, not only toward writers, but of writers toward their system. For in the Soviet Union the writer's job is to encourage, to celebrate, to explain, and in every way to carry forward the Soviet system. Whereas in America, and in England, a good writer is the watch-dog of society. His job is to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices, to stigmatize its faults. And this is the reason that in America neither society nor government is very fond of writers. The two are completely opposite approaches toward literature. — John Steinbeck

I've prided myself on being in excellent condition-as good as any man in my profession. Now this doesn't come from sitting around on your rear end. This comes from hard, hard work. — Wilt Chamberlain

This country started going to hell when they stopped hanging folks. — Neil Gaiman

It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy — Siddhartha Mukherjee

As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too. — Maya Schenwar

If you chose Option 2 [confrontation], you did well. People will be less likely to engage you in office small talk of any kind, but that's likely a benefit when you consider the fact that every ten minutes of office small talk takes one year off of your life. — Baratunde R. Thurston

Anytime you make someone laugh or satirize something, it's the best way to change someone's opinion because they're defenseless - they laugh, they listen. — John Waters

I satirize at all times, and my hyperboles are as nothing compared to the events to which they refer. — Marshall McLuhan

The city of man requires idolatry. All must bow before the symbol of its total claim. Religion is tolerated when it supports the claims of the state, party, the institutional hierarchy. But those who say, "We must obey God rather than men" are always condemned as traitors or exiled as aliens. Yet the calling of Christ's kingdom no only separates a man from the world, it also sends him to the world. In this time of the kingdom we are pilgrims, for the mountain of Christ's rule is the heavenly Zion; but in the task of the kingdom we are ambassadors, for we have been sent by the King to proclaim his terms of peace to his rebellious realm. — Edmund P. Clowney

I love you, rotten,
Delicious rottenness.
... wonderful are the hellish experiences,
Orphic, delicate
Dionysos of the Underworld. — D.H. Lawrence

The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines ... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them. And that's not funny ... OK, well, if I say that, I might get a shock laugh, but it's not really satire. — Tom Lehrer

My Hinduism must be a very poor thing if it cannot flourish even under the most adverse influence. — Mahatma Gandhi

If nothing is serious anymore, then there's nothing to satirize. — Berkeley Breathed

At first the difference will be in whatever atmosphere I bring into it. It's not going to be like, 'I really want to do The Daily Show and I'd love to turn it into an abstract musical.' I like the format and the chance to satirize the news. — Jon Stewart

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues. — Jonathan Swift

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