Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

If you're going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can't be politically correct when you do that.

I would think a sense of the absurd is more important for a political cartoonist, because that could define things like a sense of hypocrisy or a sense of the things one has to be skeptical about.

Comedy actually works best when you're living in an OK world, and you are pointing out the hypocrisy in apathy.

Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire.

Satire is fascinating stuff. It's deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it's the only thing that makes any sense.

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.

You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.

It is difficult not to write satire.

The show is a satire, which gives us freedom to do anything we want. Satire is the magic word that wipes away any culpability. The media is jealous of this freedom.

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.

Bad times for the Republic are great times for satire.

It's an old Elizabethan idea. The fool is the only one who is allowed to make fun of the king because he is a fool. I can say whatever I want about anybody else because I'm just an idiot talking - I'm not insisting that I'm any smarter than anyone else. It's satire.

A lot of French comedy is satire.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

There's always been this tradition of satirizing these rich groups of people.

A sitcom isn't usually the right tool for satire.

Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch our heads, think, do a double-take, and then think again.

Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.

Being a comedy writer gives you permission to be an outsider and poke fun at what people think about other people.

I think comedians have a function in society, which is to make fun of our icons.

Satire is a form of social control, it's what you do. It's not personal. It's a job.

It just happened that the public happened to, uh, appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.

Satire works best when it hews close to the line between the outlandish and the possible - and as that line continues to grow thinner, the satirist's task becomes ever more difficult.

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.