Lionel Trilling Quotes

Our country's social revolution lends itself to jokes and I use them.

Satire is not a social dynamite. But it is a social indicator: it shows that new men are knocking at the door.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

I wanted to do something in the style of a comedy of manners.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

There's always been this tradition of satirizing these rich groups of people.

Satire is fascinating stuff. It's deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it's the only thing that makes any sense.

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

Primarily I'm a social commentator rather than someone who's out to get the belly laugh.

I've spent my entire career being a satirist.

If you're going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can't be politically correct when you do that.

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Although humor is present in every one of my films, it has always been used as a way to make the darker, heavier stuff in my stories more palatable. I never set out to make 'Humpday' a comedy.

Comedy makes the subversion of the existing state of affairs possible.

Comedy is to force us to observe ourselves in ways that are humorous and yet, at the end of the day, that cause us enough discomfort with the status quo to make a change.

When part of what you're trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh.

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

Canada is a balloon-puncturing country. You are not really allowed to be an icon unless you also make an idiot of yourself.

One of the jobs of a stand-up comedienne is to expose hypocrisy.

The best cartoons work by making fun of sacred cows, in trying to inflict the uncomfortable.

As satirists, we get to stand on the sidelines of life and comment on what's happening.

Comedians have to challenge the power. Comedians should be dangerous and devastating - and funny. That's the hardest part.

If I had written a book saying, 'Ladies, your life is terrible,' I would have sold three copies. It's always better to laugh people into recognition.

I always feel that comedy, at its best, tackles issues that are controversial, polarizing, volatile, and sheds light onto those issues and the people involved.