William Cowper Quotes

I've thought for the last decade or so, the only actual place raw truth was seeping through in newspapers was on the Comics Pages. They were able to pull off intelligent social comment, pure truths not found elsewhere in the news pages, and had the ability to make it all funny, entertaining, and pertinent.

Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international terrorism, Central America, whatever it is - the picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It's all been a marvelous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting. It's not like a totalitarian state, where it's done by force. These achievements are under conditions of freedom.

Diplomats lie to journalists, then believe the headlines.

They didn't begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?

We suffer quite as much from exaggerated, hysterical, and untruthful statements in the press as from any wrongdoing by businessmen or politicians.

I hate to badmouth any book or writer, because I know how it feels to be on the other end of that.

People use the guise of art, and artistic expression, to do all kinds of hateful things. It's like Trump and everybody else using the guise of humor to say hateful things, the excuse being, 'I was just being funny.'

Literature is a far more ancient and viable thing than any social formation or state. And just as the state interferes in literature, literature has the right to interfere in the affairs of state.

If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.

I'm from the old school - you go where the power is, and you try to make fun of it. When it becomes off limits to say or do certain things without being brutalized or censored or whatever, it's unfortunate.

One of the jobs of comedy is to expose hypocrisy. When you look at countries like Iran or North Korea that don't have freedom of speech, we who do should push it as far as we need to.

I enjoy upsetting the right people. I love poking fun at earnest censors. I want to push the bounds of what can be said on the Internet.

You cannot have the media so close to you that it becomes your voice. This is no good because it becomes too extreme, and people will resent it.

If you listen to Howard Stern, go back and listen to Lenny Bruce, so you can hear what real talent is.

At the end of the day, media is going to say whatever they're going to say.

Howard Stern gave me the best advice about Twitter and the N word. He said maybe onstage people get the intention behind the joke, but a tweet is 140 characters or less, and maybe that's why people overreact. I don't need to rustle any more feathers and lose any investors.

If you want to rip the heart out of a democracy, you go after the facts. That's what modern authoritarians do. You lie. All the time. Then, you say it's your opponents and the journalists who lie.

At no time did I suggest that violence is justice, and I can't believe I even have to explain that. But the alternative is letting someone like Kayleigh McEnany misquote and manipulate what you say. McEnany, who repeatedly lies to the American people.

For those actors and directors who produce films which are always about the old kingdom or about heroes, you know about the fantasies related to the classics, but there is no real discussion about today's life and no discussion of the real conditions - which is really sickening. They've become part of a conspiracy, collaborators of the crime, which is lying to the general public and trying to hide the kind of criminal acts happening in many cases.

Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers

Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.

From the start, I've always admired Eminem's thinking. That's the reason I wanted to appear on the Grammys with him when I was asked. Eminem has the balls to say what he feels and to make offensive things funny. That's very necessary today in America, with people being muzzled and irony becoming a lost art. Artists like Eminem who use their free speech to get a point across are vitally important. There just aren't many people in the world with balls that big and talent that awesome.

You can say the dirty words now, but there is no content - political satire is limited to small podiums and little soap boxes.

In Germany, people are saying, "George W. Bush is an asshole. Osama Bin Laden is an asshole." But then I make jokes about Auschwitz, and how the Germans are lederhosen-wearing sausage freaks - and they hate me for this! And I'm like, "You all are sitting there because you want to relax and have a nice evening, and now you're pissed because I put also a mirror in front of you."

An American has invented a remote control that will turn off any telly within a 20ft radius. What a marvellous device! What a splendid invention! What a really helpful and improving way of devoting your time to building something that turns off culture. Next week, I'm instigating Burn a Book Week, to encourage even more conversation. I've come up with a fantastic little device which I'll call a box of matches.