Douglas Adams Quotes

The English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.

Satire is focused bitterness.

My speaking style was criticised by no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a low moment, my friends, to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg.

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.

Politics is much too serious to be taken too seriously; equally, there are many aspects of it so laughable as to be lamentable.

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

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

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.

I do situations and make fun of authority and life.

It's not good for comedy to be like, 'Thanks for liking me.' Being popular is poison.

I don't really like using ridicule as a form of humor.

I do like dating cynics - they tend to be incredibly funny.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic.

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.

I'm accused of, and perhaps rightly so, of not being mean enough. I've been taken to task in many a book review; a good satirist has to, you know, has to kill.

Bad times for the Republic are great times for satire.

Cartoons are ridicule and satire by definition. A negative attitude is the nature of the art.

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.

There was a lot about the military that I thought was pretty silly, but these cartoons weren't meant to take a poke at anybody or anything. They were meant to make people laugh.

I think a playful critique is good for all of us, and that's basically how I see satire functioning. But I'm not interested in a kind of contemptuous satirical vision; I try always, even when I'm knowingly being satirical, to also be humane, but I mean, let's face it: there's plenty in American life to make fun of, and we all participate in it.

I've done pretty well as a professional fed-up. The tools of my trade so far have been irony, tongue-in-cheek mockery, and supercilious contempt, but these are highly civilized weapons designed for 18th-century French salons.

Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel.

I like Colbert because he's funny, and he's cool. He knows how to have fun and doesn't stick his nose up to Fox.

It's rare in satirical comedy not just to be cynical.