Satirical Comedy Quotes

In a more intellectually rigorous age, I wouldn't be talked about as a satirist at all. I would just be a topical comedian.

The Simpsons is the best thing on American television.

Ill give you an idea of how Jewish Mel Brooks is: Thats a nose job.

It's a great time to be doing political satire when the world is on a knife edge.

Comedy is brutal. It's powerful, though.

Comedy is a very big part of the English culture, the sense of humor; it's a very dominant trait.

I'd rather do comedies that strike at some bigger ideas.

I would love to do a comedy spoof, like a Spinal Tap kind of thing.

I just think everyone knows you go on those [political satire] shows if you're a politician to, "humanize yourself" - to show, "Hey, I can take a joke." Well, why should satire be in the service of humanizing these people who are supposed to be the target of our venom and vitriol? I think that's unseemly.

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

A pleasant comedy, which paints the manners of the age, and exposes a faithful picture of nature, is a durable work, and is transmitted to the latest posterity. But a system, whether physical or metaphysical, commonly owes its success to its novelty; and is no sooner canvassed with impartiality than its weakness is discovered.

'The Office' is less a comedy than so many other 'comedies' that have been on the air. It's really about the balance between what is real and what is comic.

The Loved One has been the most underrated film I've worked on.

A Dirty Shame was a crazy movie. I don't understand that movie at all. I don't get it, but I'd work with John Waters again in a heartbeat. He's just a delight.

I am a standup comedian who has performed comedy in the Middle East in front of thousands of Muslims. And believe it or not, they laughed at plenty, especially when we poked fun at local culture. The Lebanese loved it when you would make fun of their driving and how, in Lebanon, a red light is just a suggestion to stop.

I have profound respect for Sacha Baron Cohen, but Borat is not a particularly comfortable movie for me to sit through.

Dont take Portlandia too personally - Its just a stupid TV show

In Hollywood, it's hard to be funny, because all the big jokes are in Washington.

The trick to political humor is not to know more than everyone else knows, but to know just what everyone else knows.

When you're doing a comedy and you want to somehow satirise people who are taking themselves seriously, I think the most serious genre is the thing you're going to get the most out of. If you're trying to satirise a comedy, it's hard to do that - it doesn't really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I'm a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.

Louie Anderson thinks my thing is the absurdness of reality. That's what we do on 'Portlandia' all the time. I try to bring that absurdness of reality to everything.

I love [Nikolai] Gogol's great eye for idiot behavior. Gogol said that life is so tragic, so stupendously sad that we'd better laugh a lot and enjoy ourselves. You either get a sense of humor going or you go under.

When Jim Carrey signed on to star in [The Cable Guy], and then they asked me to produce it, I made a very brief plea to direct - which was rejected really as quickly as anything can be.

I like insult comics. Joan Rivers, Dame Edna, people like that.

It's easy being a humorist when you've got the whole government working for you.