quotations about satire
Like the heroic couplet, of which satirists have been so fond, satire is a mix of witty closure and forward movement.
DUSTIN GRIFFIN
Satire: A Critical Reintroduction
Satire that is seasonable and just, is often more effectual than law or gospel.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.
E. L. DOCTOROW
Creationists: Selected Essays
When you do satire you use irony; you use hyperbole, and ambiguity. What I learned is that you can't litigate comedy. You can't go "No, no. Let me explain why that was funny." That doesn't work. When you're explaining, you're losing.
AL FRANKEN
interview, The Austin Chronicle, September 23, 2017
The satirist combines both the functions of the rhetorician who watches the audience and the poet who watches the subject. Satire is a transcript of reality selected by the intellectual and philosophical or religious point of view of the satirist, and at the same time satire is that reality transmitted by imaginative reflection poetically developed. Satire is rhetoric for the original audience, but poetry for subsequent audiences, or for audiences who do not allow themselves to be addressed by the satire. The original audience, upon reflection, can also see it as poetry. It is identified by what it does.
CHARLES WITKE
Latin Satire: The Structure of Persuasion
Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet
To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.
ALEXANDER POPE
Second Book of Horace
The best satire is stuff everyone has experience with, laid bare through humour.
BRENDAN ROBSON
"A friendly interview between sworn enemies", The Queen's Journal, September 14, 2017
The end of satire is reformation.
DANIEL DEFOE
preface, The True-Born Englishman
Satire is an abuse of wit. It corrects few evils.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Satire is a glass in which the beholder sees everybody's face but his own.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, "We need satire of them, not us." I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War. You think, "Oh, wow! This is great! We need a song like this, and that will really convert people. Then they'll say, 'Oh, I thought war was good, but now I realize war is bad.'" No, it's not going to change much.
TOM LEHRER
May 2000 interview, The Tenacity of the Cockroach: Conversations with Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders
Satire should, like a polished razor keen
Wound with touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
"Verses addressed to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace"
The end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction; and he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient when he prescribed harsh remedies.
JOHN DRYDEN
Satires
Of a bitter satirist -- of Swift, for instance -- it might be said that the person or thing on which his satire fell shriveled up as if the devil had spit on it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The American Notebooks
The very greatest satire, I came to think -- the kind that lives forever -- ultimately grew out of a debunking attitude toward the self. To see the world mock-heroically was necessarily to engage in a sort of preliminary self-burlesque. You couldn't take yourself seriously. You were part of it. All the Lilliputian preening and pomposity was, at bottom, one's own.
TERRY CASTLE
The Professor and Other Writings
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
The Essential Lenny Bruce
The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
"Do We Have to Fight the Battle for the Enlightenment all Over Again?"
Sometimes I think satire is the most hopeful and heartfelt form of expression because in calling out the world's absurdities and laughing in their face, I'm affirming the real possibility for change.
ROY ZIMMERMAN
"Top picks from Melissa Merli for the week to come", The News-Gazette, September 3, 2017
Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view ... hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.
PAUL KLEE
The Diaries of Paul Klee
Satire is the antidote to Pollyanna and Dr. Pangloss. It focuses our gaze sharply upon the contrast between things as they are and as they should be.
EDGAR JOHNSON
A Treasury of Satire