338 Satire Quotes

Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python.

I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.

Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.

After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind), I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry.

We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.

Take a little walk down Know You Role Boulevard, hang that right on Jabroni Drive, and then proceed to check your Aunt Jemima no-pancake-havin' ass di-rectly into the Smackdown Hotel!

From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.

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.

The Minister of Transport issued this appeal to motorists: Can anyone give him a lift to Leicester?

At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude - a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery.

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.

You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?

Here's the way I look at it. President Bush has uranium-tipped bunker busters and I have puns. I think he'll be OK.

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

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget.

I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman - I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner.

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.

Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat.

Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers.

If a man dies when you hang him, keep hanging him until he gets used to it.

It would be a very short pint. It would be gummy bears and matzah, and be called Chewy Jewy.

Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.

Everyone knows it takes a woman nine months to have a baby. But you Americans think if you get nine women pregnant, you can have a baby in a month.

Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.

A parade is the worst form of transportation known to man.

How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.

I bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork.

An apprentice mortician? What, do you only bury live people?

In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

The monkey is an organized sarcasm upon the human race.

Bob: [about Bing Crosby] He's up in Nevada looking over Boulder Dam - his piggy bank is filled. He's so loaded, you know, he uses Howard Hughes for a bell boy.

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.

Let the meek inherit the earth - they have it coming to them.

Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist.

The only gossip I'm interested in is in the Weekly World News- 'Woman's bra bursts, 11 injured.' That kind of thing.

Talvez um dia, quando o socialismo for religiao do Estado, se vejam em nichos de templo, com uma lamparina de frente, as imagens dos santos padres da revolucao: Proudhon de oculos. Bakunine parecendo um urso sob as suas peles russas, Karl Marx apoiado ao cajado simbolico do pastor de almas t.ristes.

Now you've gotta spend two thousand bucks to stay at my house. And for five, I'll let you photograph my wife in the shower.

Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.

The Polish Communists are just like radishes. They are only red on the outside'

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.

Communism is like one big phone company. If you get too rank with them, you'll wind up with a dixie cup and a thread.

I heard somebody say, 'Now where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.

The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad, and bit the man.

I can resist everything . . . except child pornography. Sweet, sweet child pornography.

Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris. Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to? Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.

The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting 'Heil, Spode!' and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: 'Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?

Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.

Attila the Hun might have broken off his engagement to her, but nobody except Attila the Hun, and he only on one of his best mornings.

It was either Phil [Dick] or [Ace editor] Terry Carr who came up with the idea of an Ace Double edition of the Holy Bible. One of these days Ace will print the Holy Bible as a Double, back to back, the Old Testament and the New Testament each cut to exactly 30,000 words, the Old Testament titled Master of Chaos and the New Testament titled The Thing That Frees Souls.

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.

An elephant. A mouse built to government specifications.

Gentlemen, I find the law very explicit on murdering your fellow man, but there's nothing here about killing a Chinaman. Case dismissed.

'Hello, and welcome to Monday Nyquil, where the big boys play with each other. Tonight we've got a good show lined up. First I'm gonna fire someone on the phone, just like Steve Austin.'

I have the perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it

You gotta see English crime. It's hilarious, you don't know if you're reading the front page or the comic section over there. I swear to God. I read an article front page of the paper one day, in England, 'Yesterday, some Hooligans knocked over a dustbin in Shaftesbury.' ...Wooooo. 'The hooligans are loose! The hooligans are loose! ...What if they become ruffians? I would hate to be a dustbin in Shaftesbury tonight. (to the tune of 'Behind Blue Eyes' by The Who) No one knows what it's like... to be a dustbin... in Shaftesbury... with hooligans...'

I actually did that act one night in the south. Then, after the show, these three rednecks came up to me. 'Hey, buddy! We're Christians and we didn't like what you said.' I said, 'Then forgive me.' Later on, when I was hanging from the tree :

This is it, folks. This is the idea which has kept me virtually unknown for the past 16 years. I have watched my crowds dwindle. I am going nowhere, and nowhere quick, but, those of you who have children, I am sorry to tell you this, but they are not special. Wait! I know some of you are going: 'What, what?' Let me just clarify: I know you think they're special : ha ha ha! I'm aware of that. I'm just here to tell you that they're not! Ha ha ha ha! Sorry. Did you know that every time a guy comes, he comes two-hundred million sperm? One out of two-hundred million - that load, we're only talking about one load - connected: Gee, what are the fucking odds? Do you know what that means? I've wiped nations off of my chest with a grey gym sock. Entire civilizations have flaked and crusted in the hair around my navel! [:] I've tossed universes in my underpants while napping. Boom! A Milkyway shoots into my jockeyshorts: 'Unngh : what's for fucking breakfast?!'

Letters from the Earth (1909)