satire quotes

There’s nothing like white trash at the White House.

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

I must have read every issue of ‚Punch‘ published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour – that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like ‚Three Men in a Boat.‘

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him ‚father.‘

The word ‚good‘ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‚President Can’t Swim.‘

Contrary to reports, this boy is not a billionaire or going to be richer than any Beatle… and not just in the sense of money, by the way; the Beatles are untouchable – those billionaire reports are a joke.

It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.

The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

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

The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal they have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats.

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

Politics is applesauce.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.

In the end, everything is a gag.

In Beverly Hills… they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

I’m sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don’t notice they’re getting made fun of. So they’ll say something back that’s not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

The Democratic position seems to be everything is going to be free. Free education. Free health care. Free housing. Free love. Free kittens, I don’t know.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.