Selected satire quotes

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

2. 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.

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

4. The only thing Madonna will ever do like a virgin is give birth in a stable.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. You have Kim Jong Il, and you have his brother, Menta Lee Il.

8. 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!

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

10. 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.

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

12. 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.

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

14. Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

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

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

17. The Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility.

18. Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook.

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

20. Do you guys have to sell everything? I'd like to buy the Earth's core.

21. 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.

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

23. 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.

24. Nothing in this book is true.

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

26. 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.

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

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

29. 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.

30. An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station.

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

32. 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.

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

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

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

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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.

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

40. 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.

41. When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

42. 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.

43. George Washington's brother, Lawrence, was the Uncle of Our Country.

44. I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many people who believe it.

45. When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.

46. I had a truly horrible dream last night. . . [Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Tyson and I] were on our way to a TV studio for a debate about his long-time working friendship with the powerful Bush family from Texas and how it might affect the next Bush presidency when The Terminator seizes power in Sacramento and tries to hand over the state's 54 electoral votes by election day in 2004. That is the basic plan behind Schwarzenegger running. He doesn't want to be Governor, he just wants the electoral votes to go to Bush this time.

47. A new poll shows that Americans now believe that Bill Clinton is more honest than President Bush. [:] At least when Clinton screwed the nation, he did it one person at a time.

48. Orthodox Jews, or, as they are known in the Talmud, the Really Chosen Ones, are committed to the idea that the entire Torah was dictated by God verbatim to Moses at Mount Sinai... Other forms of Judaism dispute this claim, although it does explain certain passages in the first Torah, such as, 'I'm sorry, am I boring you?' and 'What do you like better, Moses, Lord Almighty or Big Hoohah?'

49. I'm working on 'Buffy: Deep Space Nine. It will be dark and badly received.

50. Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden.

51. 'Poly' means more than one, and ticks are bloodsucking parasites.

52. Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, I remember, which he said should be carved in big letters in a wall of the Grand Canyon for the flying-saucer people to find, was this: WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP Only he didn't say 'doggone.''

53. During the Vietnam War, Abbie Hoffman announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not.

54. I'll publish right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

55. I got back from Toronto, where they had a severe outbreak of SARS - you know, Severe Asian Racism Syndrome.

56. France has usually been governed by prostitutes.

57. In the sixties, the recycling of pop culture - turning it into Pop art and camp - had its own satirical zest. Now we're into a different kind of recycling. Moviemakers give movies of the past an authority that those movies didn't have; they inflate images that may never have compelled belief, images that were no more than shorthand gestures - and they use them not as larger-than-life jokes but as altars.

58. All right, you great git, you've asked for it. I'll cover the world in Tastee-Freez and Wimpy Burgers. I'll fill it with concrete runways, motorways, aircraft, television, automobiles, advertising, plastic flowers, frozen food and supersonic bangs. I'll make it so noisy and disgusting that even you'll be ashamed of yourself! No wonder you've so few friends; you're unbelievable!

59. He is the very pineapple of politeness!

60. Will Honeycomb calls these over-offended ladies the outrageously virtuous.

61. My character is self-important, poorly informed, well-intentioned, but an idiot: So we said, 'Let's give him a promotion.'

62. The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram - that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything.

63. 'All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.'

64. The Times is speechless and takes three columns to express its speechlessness.

65. The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.

66. I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter.

67. The only place Al Gore conserves energy these days is on the treadmill. I don't want to suggest that Al's getting big, but the last time I saw him on TV I thought, 'That reminds me - we have to do something about saving the polar bears.'

68. All I want is a warm bed, a kind word and unlimited power.

69. Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces [in 1968]. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.

70. Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of tentative agreements...

71. On National Security Agency's eavesdropping program: Now all of us can talk to the NSA - just by dialing any number.

72. If a child shows himself to be incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity marry, and perpetuate his kind.

73. One day Donald Trump will discover that he is owned by Lutheran Brotherhood and must renegotiate his debt load with a committee of silent Norwegians who don't understand why anyone would pay more than $120.00 for a suit.

74. And now, in the interest of equal time, here is a message from the National Pancake Institute, and it says 'Fuck waffles'.

75. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. ... And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.

76. Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madames, greeting the punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs and then pimping their books.

77. It was wonderful, a stunning happy ending to what began as just another tragic rock & roll story, as if Bob Dylan had been arrested in Miami for jacking off in a seedy little XXX theater while stroking the spine of a fat young boy.

78. I had a soft spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth, and also because his wife gave the best head in Hollywood.

79. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

80. A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure.

81. It's a more ridiculing, divisive humor today, especially with the advent of political incorrectness, which is a license to be as ridiculing and awful about certain groups... There should be room for everybody, absolutely, and then the culture is going to decide the prevailing weight. We can't decide it individually. Nobody is here without a reason. ... I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy - from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated - but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.

82. If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line of death.

83. I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound - with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

84. I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

85. I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the 'No Fact Zone'. Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term.

86. Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass, is my point. But I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.

87. I must confess the the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occurred to him.

88. Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the levelling wind.

89. I think crime pays. The hours are good, you meet a lot of interesting people, you travel a lot.

90. a politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man

91. On Jerry Falwell: If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.

92. The Constitution of the United States of America, Article V, Section 1: 'There shall be a National Anthem containing incomprehensible words and a high note that normal humans cannot hit without risk of hernia.'

93. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

94. My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.

95. 'When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?' This title offends all three major religions, and even vegetarians!

96. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

97. We're the phone company. We don't care; we don't have to.

98. Never mind his carbon footprint - have you seen the size of Al Gore's regular footprint lately? It's almost as deep as Janet Reno's

99. Some of you might be familiar with some of my more famous tips from the past. How to get rid of counterfeit money? Put it in the collection plate at church!

100. I was lucky enough on this trip to interview none other than the late Adolf Hitler. I was gratified to learn that he now feels remorse for any actions of his, however indirectly, which might have had anything to do with the violent deaths suffered by thirty-five million people during World War II. He and his mistress Eva Braun, of course were among those casualties, along with four million other Germans, six million Jews, eighteen million citizens of the Soviet Union and so on. 'I paid my dues with everyone else,' he said. It is his hope that a modest monument, possibly a stone cross, since he was a Christian, will be erected somewhere in his memory, possibly on the grounds of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. It should be incised, he said, with his name and dates 1889-1945. Underneath should be a two-word sentence in German: 'Entschuldigen Sie.' Roughly translated into English, this comes out, 'I beg your pardon,' or 'Excuse Me.'