Dana Carvey Quotes

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.

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

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.

Bill Maher fancies himself the reincarnation of Lenny Bruce.

You know, what I like about 'The Family Tree' is it's a kitchen sink movie; you can't think of anything that it doesn't either throw into the story for conflict or poke fun at or attack, even, so I like it.

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

Ksenia Sobchak as president is like Sergei Shnurov as an artist. It's satire. It's a very high-level art project.

Comedians have to challenge the power. Comedians should be dangerous and devastating - and funny. That's the hardest part.

I feel like comedy is important, and I think political satire can be really important.

Drag is pastiche and parody and satire. Drag queens are never meant to be stars. We make fun of stars. Drag queens are the people that 'point' at the star.

Comedians play off of social commentary.

'The Dictator' - well, that was just a comedy, and I suppose the morality was incidental. It was just something to try and make people laugh rather than being a serious thing.

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 write what I think is funny and I write from a sense of popping a balloon or a sense of injustice, whether it's about yourself, or whether it's about something else. It's my worldview; it doesn't mean that everybody has to agree with it.

I love nothing better than a dirty cartoon. I think that it's really, really funny to see adult themes in a genre that's usually directed towards children.

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

Eighty per cent of my output is 'Mallory clowns on the Western canon,' and I'm happy to be that person.

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

I'm a comic, and I'm supposed to outrage and make people laugh, Part of makin' people laugh is to shake up their thinkin'. That's what I came here to do.

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

Comedy is a great weapon of attack. It's not a great weapon of support.

I don't want to offend people and I don't want to be mean, but social commentary and comedy for me are part and parcel. I think the greatest social activists are comedians.

The satiric ethos of Mad was a much bigger childhood influence.

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

Rory Bremner I have no problem with; he is a satirist, and a very funny one, too.