quotations about satire
Satire has a great big glaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center. Directness there must be and singleness of aim: it is all aim, all trajectory.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
notes to Kenneth Allott, Contemporary Verse
But satire, ever moral, ever new,
Delights the reader and instructs him, too.
She, if good sense refine her sterling page,
Oft shakes some rooted folly of the age.
NICOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
Satires
Satire is a composition of salt and mercury; and it depends upon the different mixture and preparation of these ingredients, that it comes out a noble medicine or a rank poison.
F. JEFFREY
attributed, Day's Collacon
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
LORD BYRON
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
In-character satire is without question the hardest satire to perfect. You have to be an exaggerated version of the thing you are mocking, without inadvertently making the object of your ridicule look good or you look stupid.
SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN
"How Jordan Klepper will win the Trump Era satire game", Salon, September 30, 2017
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Spring 1967
Undeserved merit is satire.
SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX
attributed, Day's Collacon
Satire is one of the most powerful weapons of speech in a free society. It stirs the collective consciousness against oppressive governments and laws, rulers, the rich and powerful (look at Voltaire and the rich tradition of political cartoons in the modern world, all the way to the biting social commentary of freedom of speech warriors like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin), and moreover points a mirror at we ourselves as individuals: exposing the hypocrisies and frailties of our individual positions on issues -- hopefully getting us to see where others are coming from in how they view the world. Thus, satire also takes tremendous steps to opening up dialogue on the issues where it had otherwise been stifled -- penetrating that wall through a universal language of humor: if we are only willing to give a little introspection and laugh at ourselves.
WESS HAUBRICH
"In defense of Truly Free Speech: 'South Park' at 21", The 405, September 17, 2017
Political satire loosens the belt of those who need it tightened the most.
RACHEL FLYNN
"We should not be laughing at dangerous politicians", The Student Newspaper, September 28, 2017
The true aim of satire should be, like that of our guns, making a good report, but wounding no one.
WILLIAM JABET
"Lines Drawn in a Circle by a Shakespearian Clown"
He that hath a satirical vein, as maketh others afraid of his wit, so he need be afraid of others' memory.
FRANCIS BACON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Satire is a tricky business. Because a writer of satirical material is constantly skirting the edge of acceptance, he is constantly in danger of going too far -- especially in these days of "political correctness."
CHUCK AVERY
"Satire is not for everyone", Courier-Times, September 29, 2017
Satire is protected speech even if the object of satire doesn't get it.
AL FRANKEN
interview, The Austin Chronicle, September 23, 2017
If we cannot establish fundamental common sense and basic expression, then "satire" is nothing but emoji packs. Our lives will be full of it.
YOUSHANDABU
"Online Group Rules No Joking Matter", China Digital Times, September 26, 2017
You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were.
ALAN MOORE
interview, "The Craft", Engine Comics, January 2005
A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Five Types: A Book of Essays
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 to get relief.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
Esquire, 1936
A single satire will sometimes effect more good than a hundred sermons.
PIETRO ARETIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
If satire is a reformative art -- and that will always be a matter of dispute -- it works for its reformations by way of deformations. In other words, it is a catachrestical art. And catachrestical for reasons of hostility and malice.
VALENTINE CUNNINGHAM
"Twentieth-century Fictional Satire", A Companion to Satire: Ancient and Modern
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
JONATHAN SWIFT
preface, The Battle of the Books