Dana Carvey Quotes

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.

The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression.

If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you don't have a regime.

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.

If a culture doesn't allow you to laugh at the leaders or at things that your eyes and ears tell you are actually happening, that's not good.

Poking fun at other people's beliefs, while it may seem frivolous and offensive, is a non-negotiable right. It is a principle that underpins free speech, the basis for progress.

Well, I'm not afraid to say something if I think it's funny, even if it's harsh or racist.

The idea that the law should punish what is rude; that government should protect our tender sensibilities from those who would - quite often with shallow motivations but sometimes with deeper and more serious complaints - challenge our national certainties and rituals, should alarm and anger us.

It just seemed to me to be a great story, set back in its time but something that seemed to have relevance for our time. Now that the film is coming out, it looks like we're back in another time where repression of expression is all the rage.

My thinking is, if we're setting out to make comedy in which nothing is off limits, then everybody is fair game.

Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.

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

What's politically correct a lot of times is not funny.

I do walk with a bit of a swagger. I do swear a lot. And people are going to be offended by that. But in this PC world, you can't be honest.

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.

I'm a big fan of comedians not having to apologize for anything. Nowadays it seems comedians are always apologizing for being funny.

I try to exist in a world where there is freedom of opinion, where you're allowed to make jokes. I don't want to live in some PC world where no-one's allowed to say anything.

I've thought for the last decade or so, the only actual place raw truth was seeping through in newspapers was on the Comics Pages. They were able to pull off intelligent social comment, pure truths not found elsewhere in the news pages, and had the ability to make it all funny, entertaining, and pertinent.

There's several ways of saying what's on your mind. And in states and counties where it ain't too healthy to talk too loud, speak your mind, or even vote like you want to, folks have found other ways of getting the word around. One of the mainest ways is by singing.

The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar 'queen,' alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades.

Humor comes in all forms, and everyone has their cup of tea about what makes them laugh. But the day we censor humor is a sad one for sure.

Political correctness? In my humor, I never talk about politics. I was never much into all that.

One does not arrest Voltaire.

I learned to think about religion, race and sex through the complex and often unattractive medium of jokes.

It just so happens that people aren't doing comedy about abortion or cannibalism or waterboarding. And that to me doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't aspects of those subjects that are funny, it just means that people are too uptight.