John Gourley Quotes

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.

By the very nature of satire or parody, you have to love and respect your target and respect it enough to understand every aspect of it, so you can more effectively make fun of it.

Everything needs to be lampooned. I believe that there's not any sacred ground.

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.

And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.

The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that's how self-loathing is made palatable.

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

I didn't necessarily set out to think of a show to make fun of reality shows.

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

From my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at - you know, and the soapbox routine. They're much more uneasy knowing they're a target of ridicule.

Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt.

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

I haven't watched 'Mad TV' a lot, but I have seen some stuff on there that is truly funny. You have to have some sort of attitude toward the subject, and they seem to have it. It depends on how much blood you want to draw.

I've spent my entire career being a satirist.

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

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

If nothing is serious anymore, then there's nothing to satirize.

You can make fun of everything.

What I don't like is snark for snark's sake. If you are going to make fun of me, at least be witty while doing it.

Even people that I agree with can do something that would be a target for a bit of humor.

I think to simply make fun of something isn't particularly interesting. I try to not just do a parody of something or belittle something or disparage something.

Parody is homage gone sour.

Eddie Murphy said once in an interview that nothing is offensive if it's funny. I sort of agree with that, but if something's funny and you're the subject of it, sometimes it's more offensive. If someone's insulting you, you want them to sound like an idiot.

It's funny to be a critic.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.