Jackson Browne Quotes

Comedy is a socially acceptable form of hostility and aggression. That is what comics do, stand the world upside down.

It's a sort of piss-take on culture, because a drag queen is a clown - a parody of our society. It's a sarcastic spoof on culture, which allows us to laugh at ourselves - but in a way that is inclusive of everyone.

Good comedians are great philosophers.

I tell the truth and I don't try to sugarcoat things. But I also decided that if you don't use humor or satire, then it's just too dark all the time. And one of my favorite literary works is A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. As you know, that was an enormously famous satire piece that was able to point out, you know, things to people in a different way. And I do believe that satire and humor can reveal truth in a way that sometimes doesn't get revealed through other means. And so I decided to, every now and then, use satire and humor as well.

As a comedian, I think we all look for those areas where the truth diverts from what people are saying. That's why politics is such a rich area for us, because politicians make promises, and they don't keep them, and when we point out the difference, we get the laugh.

Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer.

Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.

I know everybody wants humor to be subversive and speak truth to power. I don't think power's been listening, incidentally.

Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people just like me.

I'd rather do comedies that strike at some bigger ideas.

It's a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth; sometimes it delays it.

We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.

It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

What would we do without irony? Check out your own daily reliance on it, the foul-weather friend who's there for you when nothing else is.

The Harvard Lampoon itself, which had a pretty stellar run in the '60s.

Did you ever notice that everyone in favour of birth control has already been born ?

The role of the comedian is to say 'Wait a minute' when a consensus starts to form.

If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.

Sometimes presenting the most ignorant point of view can be the best way to satirize the issue and highlight that ignorance.

Everyone is a comedy. If people are laughing at you, they just don't quite understand the joke that is themselves.

Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python.

Comedy distances pain, but leaves signs of it everywhere.

Comedy has a responsibility to be a voice of society, so within that, there's always going to be those that talk about those subjects and things that are going on in the world.

A long memory is the most subversive idea in America. A tautology is a thing which is tautological. A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. If your kids look like you, it's hereditory. If they look like the neighbor, it's the environment. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.