Ari Shaffir Quotes

I began in an era where four-letter words were not allowed.

It's really frustrating when you write a show and it's really funny and someone and from Standards and Decency says, 'You can't put that in because it has a naughty word.'

When I rapped for 'Manto', I used cuss words and no one objected because it was an adult movie. I feel cuss words are also a way of expression.

At a time when political correctness is valued over honesty I would also like to say right on motherfuckers!

In the clubs, it's all out and you can say whatever as the character. TV has standards.

There shouldn't be any censorship on making a film.

Why shouldn't I be allowed to say stupid, outrageous things?

It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

If you're politically correct, chances are you're not coming to one of my shows. I get to go onstage and say things that everybody thinks all the time, but can't say out loud.

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.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go.

Obviously I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.

Some comedians tell nice jokes that you can tell to your kids. Some use bad words - they work 'blue.' If you don't want to hear a joke that's blue, you shouldn't go to a comedy club where a comedian who makes blue jokes is performing.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.

Certain things were deemed to be offensive. It was usually bad language.

Performance artists in a free society have the right to do the most extraordinary and bizarre things. That’s called ‘Freedom of Speech.’

No person or set of persons can properly establish a standard of expression for others.

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

I think people are frightened of saying what they think, and I think that's a bad thing for society.

Any society that starts forbidding certain words or expressions is a society you should be wary about, whether it's the KGB or social consensus that enforces it.

I'm not one of those people who believes in going endlessly around finger wagging and ticking people off for occasional colourful use of language.

The idea of what's acceptable and what's shocking, that's where I investigate. I mean, you can't be on 'Top Gear,' where your only argument is that it's all just a joke and anyone who takes offence is an example of political correctness gone mad, and then not accept the counterbalance to that.

I'm completely allergic to being politically correct.