Peter McWilliams Quotes

The satirical direction I have chosen is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite way of saying that I have high expectations for the human race.

Wyndham Lewis is basically a pessimist, thinking of human beings as doomed animals or determinist machines. His theory of satire is based on this view, and he finds plenty of evidence to support it in contemporary practice.

All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.

I would say most comedians have a very cynical worldview of the way the world can work. It's almost like if you didn't, you couldn't be a comedian.

I'm not a particularly shiny, happy person. I'm fairly cynical, and that's what draws me to comedy.

A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye.

I don't like comedy that makes me feel worse about the world than I already felt before I turned it on.

I have a very sardonic view of life.

Irony is based on insecurity; people like to not like things because they don't understand them.

Nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.

Don't you miss the days when America was just morally bankrupt?

We actually became just what it was that we'd set out to make fun of.

To the extent that there is anything properly identifiable as dignity in our society today, our present writers of comedy would be inclined to treat it as a proper object of ridicule.

I watch the news, which is its own reality show. I love 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' I love it because it's funny and because I realize that I'm happier than Larry David.

Half-brights consider it comedy gold to congratulate anyone they dislike for 'winning the Kentucky Derby!' The only thing more bracingly original to not-smart people is: 'Stay classy!'

England's just very cynical. Like I am. Like we all are.

I love Larry David's take on things in 'Seinfeld', which is that you shouldn't try to help people because it'll always put you into new situations which are unpleasant.

Comedy actually works best when you're living in an OK world, and you are pointing out the hypocrisy in apathy.

If you look at 'Network' or any kind of satire, it's fundamentally unemotional in some ways.

It's gratifying to know that America can be so much more than the land of the free and home of the rest of us.

Doug Stanhope is great - I saw his 'Burning the Bridge to Nowhere' show and it was inspiring. He's like an anti-shaman, taking the sting out of a bunch of things we've chosen to give a symbolic power to. I've made it sound noble and worthy there, it's not, it's really funny.

I say every slur on the planet - racial, homosexual, everything to do with every ethnic group on the planet - and guess what? I will never apologize for that because I know why I do it, and it is to make a valid point about ignorance in this society.

It's true that none of my characters are admirable. But maybe I'm primarily a satirist, and a satirist needs to hold up what's not admirable.

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.