Judith Butler Quotes

From the start, I've always admired Eminem's thinking. That's the reason I wanted to appear on the Grammys with him when I was asked. Eminem has the balls to say what he feels and to make offensive things funny. That's very necessary today in America, with people being muzzled and irony becoming a lost art. Artists like Eminem who use their free speech to get a point across are vitally important. There just aren't many people in the world with balls that big and talent that awesome.

We must defend freedom of expression and if I had to chose, I prefer the excess of caricature over the excess of censure.

I wouldn't perform in front of the Nazis. I hear they didn't take freedom of speech too well. It would be a fun gig to rip into them, but I don't think the ending would be great for me.

I'm not offended. Lenny Bruce taught me that everything's funny. You can make everything funny. I don't think that assassinations are funny, I don't think you can make fun of ISIS, but almost everything is funny. And If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? So I don't mind ethnic humor. I like ethnic humor. I like dialect jokes. Laughter is a very subjective thing. If it's funny to you it's funny. And a lot of things are funny to me.

I suppose authoritarians don't like being made fun of because authoritarian rulers have a very inflated sense of themselves and don't like being deflated, which makes it all the more important to continue to deflate them. These are very courageous people around the world who poke fun from inside these societies. So, we now have to broaden the definition of what we mean by "writer" to include bloggers, cartoonists, song writers, visual artists - all these people are, in different ways, quite brave.

Political correctness may make for smooth edges, but it does little for the imagination and nothing for the arts. Writers work best when they are exploring at the outer limits of what is traditional, acceptable, or conventional.

In the end, censoring a comedian's jokes is on par with censoring 'Huckleberry Finn.' Now, I'm not comparing myself to Mark Twain - he had much wavier hair and a slightly thicker mustache. But when you deny an artist the chance to explore his art, you're forcing your beliefs on him.

I would welcome satirical references to political leaders as part of freedom of expression.

I think that to a great degree, reggae companies have become very corporate and so maybe some don't have that freedom to say whatever they want to say.

I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say. Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them. I think if journalists start doing that then they won't be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won't be practicing satire.

I am against censorship in any form. I think anybody should be able to make any movie he or she wants and let the public decide. If it's disgusting and they don't want to see it, they won't go. I believe in the audience.

It would be nice to think that a censor could allow a genuine work of artistic seriousness and ban a titillating piece of sadism, but it would take a miracle to make such a distinction stick.

...the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given.... if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order.... There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state.

The time-honored role of the artist [is] to speak truth to power.

I think that it's hard for vain people to be funny. I think you can look any way you want as long as you have a good sense of humor about yourself.

Comedy is very interesting because you can very quickly cross into dangerous territory. I mean look at what happened, unfortunately, (in) Paris a couple of weeks ago. They were making comics - which were really satire - but it offended people. I'm not saying the reaction was justified but there's definitely a line when you're doing comedy or satire and how it might affect somebody. That's the thing you have to watch and I think you have to be respectful of it.

I think people were a little bit too concerned about what I would or would not be allowed to say. So let me just get that out of the way and get on to the business of telling, you know, a story, or two, or three, or 15. And also to say, "Okay, look. Here it is, don't worry about it. The restrictions and the watered-down and all the stuff that you thought was gonna happen really isn't the case." So we done got that out the way, and now we can just kind of move on.

You can say the dirty words now, but there is no content - political satire is limited to small podiums and little soap boxes.

In civic life, I think that's where you can debate what is good taste and what is acceptable to other people, and what's gonna offend people. Do that there, but leave it out of art, because art is the one frontier that shouldn't have restraints put on it.

Joe Lieberman frightens me. Why should we, an Hollywood voter, donate money to a man who threatens our creative freedom, our freedom of expression.

That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

In the wake of the deaths of the satirists, Je suis Charlie, I am Charlie, became a slogan of solidarity for free expression around the world.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.

Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.

If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire. Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk.