George Orwell Quotes

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

The nature of comedy is 'just do it.' But I think what's interesting about it is this joke has been around and why. And it's just saying what's wrong and how wrong can you be if you say it.

Who's to say where funny stops and 'too far' starts?

Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.

No subject is unsuitable for comedy.

Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.

Inappropriateness is funny to me. Rudeness is hilarious.

Comedy is the ultimate anarchist.

The best cartoons work by making fun of sacred cows, in trying to inflict the uncomfortable.

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

What is satire if not a marriage of civil disobedience to a laugh track, a potent brew of derision and lack of respect that acts as a nettle sting on the thin skin of the humourless?

Monty Python never directly said, 'We're liberals' - they just did their sketches, and you had to figure it out. Generally, they were anti-establishment, of course, making fun of the people in power. I think, comedians, that's their job - pointing out what other people might not notice and going, 'Yoo-hoo, over here.'

My audience expects me to push the limits, to be politically incorrect. I do that because for me, that's the only place where the fun is, when I get to push the boundaries and make people laugh at things that they probably didn't want to laugh at.

In my own mind, I can joke about anything.

Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.

I don't want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of 'Idiocracy' and 'Borat,' without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture. It's one thing to mess stuff up and break stuff, but [Borat] is really pointing out the ideology of America. It's one thing to break stuff and damage people's possessions, but when you start aiming at the ideology of America, that's dangerous comedy.

I think humor is such a personal thing, and you put a microphone in somebody's face, they're going to say something that offends somebody.

Though not really a comedy, 'Rosewater' is a demonstration of the creed behind 'The Daily Show': belief in the crucial need for impious wit against entrenched power. The freedom of the press is also the freedom to depress - and to inspire. That's a message that can outlive any Oscar season.

One of the jobs of comedy is to expose hypocrisy. When you look at countries like Iran or North Korea that don't have freedom of speech, we who do should push it as far as we need to.

I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also a possibility to escape that darkness. So, for me, humor is an attempt to capture everyday tragedy and everyday hopeful moments that we experience all of the time.

One nice thing about making jokes is that you don't have to prove them.

I enjoy upsetting the right people. I love poking fun at earnest censors. I want to push the bounds of what can be said on the Internet.

All comedy is funny because it tells us truths that we recognise through laughter, but that doesn't mean it can't be unnerving. Think of 'Fawlty Towers'; it can be very, very dark, but by God, it's funny. The two things are not in opposition.

I look to icons like George Carlin, Chris Rock, and Richard Pryor on how to present these concepts of social change and subversiveness to an audience in a way that's palatable.

We seem to have lost our British sense of humour. It's a great shame. We have to be so careful nowadays; we have lost a lot of humour because people are too frightened of getting too near touchy subjects.