Quotes by Satirists - Page 14

Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A first-rate story is easily killed by second-rate design.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The story is told of yourself.
Horace
What to wear: An employee chooses. How to dress: His employer chose.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If heaven really exists: then heaven is the job, hell is unemployment, while life is merely an interview.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
High heels are a short (theist) woman's (subconscious) way of telling God to go to hell … in public.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If one is seeking for Heaven on earth, has slept in geography class.
Stanisław Jerzy Lec
As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Clothes are a homeless man’s home.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To a homeless man, home is literally where the heart is.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Honesty is admired, and starves.
Juvenal
To a fireman, wind is a curse. To a sailor, wind is a blessing.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To become richer, earn more. To appear richer, move into a poorer neighborhood.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Spam is a waste of the receivers’ time, and, a waste of the sender’s optimism.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A genius is a grown-up that did not grow up.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
a story is ready when it falls from your face
Steve Aylett
Natales grate numeras?(Do you count your birthdays with gratitude?)
Horace
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degreeOf blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Alexander Pope
False humility is better than no humility at all.
Paul Krassner
It is a sign of intellectual maturity to always crawl to conclusions.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A newspaper is an oversized book with adverts and an expiry date.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The name of a great writer is usually bigger than the title of his book. Both literally and figuratively.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially to the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has.
Malcolm Muggeridge
The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.
Malcolm Muggeridge
I discovered that everything you do is in response to a request or a suggestion made to you by some other party either inside you or outside. Some of these suggestions are good and praiseworthy and some of them are undoubtedly delightful. But the majority of them are definitely bad and are pretty considerable sins as sins go.
Flann O'Brien
If human beings were really progressive creatures, then all boys would be smarter, healthier, and, wealthier, than their grandfathers.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
King- Hamilton, Judge Alan ( b 1900 )'...I think he erred on the side of severity when he gave Janie Jones, the notorious madame, seven years after the jury had acquitted her'. 'Well, these things are relative of course. It all depends on what you've been acquitted of. Miss Jones was innocent of a very serious offence.
William Donaldson
They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.
Jonathan Swift
I am against justice … whenever it is carried out by a mob.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives the
Alexander Pope
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Alexander Pope
In a society where women are truly equal to men, a kid bred by a theist mother and an atheist father is born an agnostic. In a patriarchal society, the kid is automatically an atheist.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If heaven really exists: then, technically, living is an activity that believers keep themselves busy with — while they wait for their death.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Religion is a non-alcoholic man's alcohol. Alcohol is a non-religious man's religion.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Intellect is the virtue of ignoring one’s emotions’ attempt to contaminate one’s opinions.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Nature to all things fixed the limits fitAnd wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.As on the land while here the ocean gains.In other parts it leaves wide sandy plainsThus in the soul while memory prevails,The solid power of understanding failsWhere beams of warm imagination play,The memory's soft figures melt awayOne science only will one genius fit,So vast is art, so narrow human witNot only bounded to peculiar arts,But oft in those confined to single partsLike kings, we lose the conquests gained before,By vain ambition still to make them moreEach might his several province well command,Would all but stoop to what they understand.
Alexander Pope
He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: “My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself,” continued the king, “who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
Jonathan Swift
For forms of Government let fools contest. Whate'er is best administered is best.
Alexander Pope
Because of the power that we have given money: The government would rather have taxpayers who do not vote, than voters who do not pay tax.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?
Thomas Love Peacock
If you can't say "Fuck" you can't say, "Fuck the government.
Lenny Bruce
Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before – usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimble-riggers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature.
Flann O'Brien
Graphic designers judge a cover by its book.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If you want to be happy, be so.
Kozma Prutkov
He who says that someone isn’t himself is a victim of statistics.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
An ID number is only there to 'identify' human beings. Use it to assume people’s intellect or wisdom at your own risk.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.
Ambrose Bierce
The sacred exists only at the expense of the truth.
Mark Russell
King David had gotten old. He was so cold and frail that the court appointed a young woman to snuggle with him in his bed. No, they didn't have sex. Though the court did make a point of hiring someone beautiful, just to put a little sizzle in his chicken.
Mark Russell
This is the body's nurse; but since man's witFound the art of cookery, to delight his sense,More bodies are consumed and kill'd with itThan with the sword, famine, or pestilence.
John Davies of Hereford
Some kid asked what a dilemma is. And I replied: When a starving man has to choose between a plate of food, and, a roll of toilet paper.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Civilization transformed man from a food gatherer to a gatherer of pieces of paper: diplomas, employment contracts, money, etc.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
12% of employees eat because they are hungry. 88% of employees eat because it is 1 o’clock.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A healthy man watched what he ate. An intelligent man watched what he watched.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Eating a salad (in public) is an overweight person’s attempt to appear in control.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Never judge the deeds of a starving man while you’re on a full tummy.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
For good health, watch what you eat. For a good head, watch what you watch.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Sustainability is best illustrated by those who sell food … just so they afford something to eat.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Eating healthy is expensive. Not eating healthy is expensive. One dents your pocket. The other dents your health.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana