99 Satirical Quotes

Satire has long been a powerful tool in both literature and speech, wielded to highlight the absurdities and contradictions of society, politics, and human nature. With its blend of wit, irony, and humor, satire not only entertains but also provokes thought and, at times, spurs change. In this collection, we've gathered 99 of the most incisive and memorable satirical quotes that cut to the core of the human experience. Whether you're a lover of classic literature, contemporary comedy, or just appreciate a clever turn of phrase, you're sure to find something here that resonates. So sit back, relax, and enjoy these gems of satirical wisdom.

1. “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. “Even ivory towers need central heating.” - Breyten Breytenbach

3. “Welcome to Hell. Here's your accordion.” - Gary Larson

4. “Ah! good Sir! no Whores before Dinner, I beseech you."[Love's Last Shift]” - Colley Cibber

5. “Oh well," McWatt sang, "what the hell.” - Joesph Heller

6. “The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.” - Martin Amis

7. “Here's an easy way to figure out if you're in a cult: If you're wondering whether you're in a cult, the answer is yes.” - Stephen Colbert

8. “He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.” - P.G. Wodehouse

9. “I'm not scared of death, I just don't want to seek it out.” - Tommy Higgins

10. “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.” - Jonathan Swift

11. “Irreverence is our only sacred cow.” - Paul Krassner

12. “There were people who believed their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existance of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed by their house, by the malice of trade unions, by the power of callous employers, by the refusal of the health service to take their condition seriously, by communism, by capitalism, by atheism, by anything, in fact, but their own futile, weak-minded failure to get a fucking grip.” - Stephen Fry

13. “Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.” - Franz Kafka

14. “Love turns, with little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.” - William Hazlitt

15. “Let Sporus tremble — "What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?"Yet let me flap this Bug with gilded wings,This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings; Whose Buzz the Witty and the Fair annoys,Yet Wit ne'er tastes, and Beauty ne'er enjoys,” - Alexander Pope

16. “Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.” - E. L. Doctorow

17. “Invisible things are the only realities.” - Edgar Allan Poe

18. “Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing -- fortifying and bracing -- seemingly just as was wanted -- sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure.” - Jane Austen

19. “The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?” - William Makepeace Thackeray

20. “Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.” - Ambrose Bierce

21. “TWO AND TWO MAKES FIVE” - George Orwell

22. “A Harvey Nicks chick with throwaway morals and a trustfund appetite.” - Saira Viola

23. “I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.” - Edwin Abbott Abbott

24. “Mishaque was a stouty blend of Irish "shrek" mixed with crazy Jafakain, his front was car dealing.” - Saira Viola

25. “Also unfortunately, Congress is far too busy asking if baseball players are really as strong as they seem and trying to choke bankers with wads of cash to grant more funds to such trifling matters as the avoidance of space bullets, so they won't give NASA the money” - Robert Brockway

26. “Just for a while": Death's opening chat-up line in His great seduction, before he drugged you with soporific comforts, distracted you with minor luxuries and ensnared you with long-term payment plans.Join the Rat Race "just for a while."Concentrate on your career "just for a while."Move in with your girlfriend "just for a while."Find a bigger place, out in the burbs "just for a while."Lie down in that wooden box "just for a while.” - Christopher Brookmyre

27. “Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman” - Oscar Wilde

28. “I've always felt I deserved a wider audience, so thank you for reading this.” - Ivana Hruba

29. “But that's men all over ... Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

30. “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 odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” - Johnathan Swift

31. “An Ass put on a Lion's skin and wentAbout the foreset with much merriment,Scaring the foolish beasts by brooks and rocks,Till at last he tried to scare the Fox. But Reynard, hearing from beneath the mane That Raucous voice so petulant and vain,Remarked. O' Ass, I too would run away,But that I know your old familiar bray'.That's just the way with asses, just the way.” - Aesop

32. “Great News! If you quit being cunty the whole world will stop being against you!” - Sarah Silverman

33. “Well-lit streets discourage sin, but don't overdo it.” - William Kennedy

34. “The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.” - Louis Simpson

35. “At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.” - Eric Idle

36. “Apologize: To lay the foundation for a future offence.” - Ambrose Bierce

37. “Clever is when one is crafty enough to mistake your imagination for intelligence. Smart is when one assumes they are too educated to notice the difference.” - Kerry E. Wagner

38. “The emperor is naked!"The parade stopped. The emperor paused. A hush fell over the crowd, until one quick-thinking peasant shouted:"No, he isn't. The emperor is merely endorsing a clothing-optional lifestyle!” - James Finn Garner

39. “Tides are like politics. They come and go with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarely a good news.” - Jack McDevitt

40. “Does it not whet your appetite for the critical opera omnia of such an author, where he will freely have at the lenth and breath of Scripture? Can you not see his promised land flowing with peanut butter and jelly; his apocalypse, in which the great whore of Babylon is given the cup of ginger ale of the fierceness of the wrath of God?” - Robert Farrar Capon

41. “And it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to take off your hat first!” - Susan Kay

42. “I know a lie when I hear one.” - Adrian Mitchel

43. “Since my trips to Earth, I've only managed to assemble a few basics facts about humans, condensing them in to four, overall points: kids got Reese's, teens got recess, adults got recessions, and seniors got receding.” - Tai Odunsi

44. “She wore an A-line bridal gown with a V-shaped neckline while Apollo playing Bach's Air on the G string.” - Tai Odunsi

45. “No quality imparts apparent strength to its possessors more effectively than faith. From hospital beds to battlefields, it is the iron that strengthens a man to confront his destiny.” - Mike Corbett

46. “I am fashionably unimpressed with the material world. I am moved by the beauty of aspiration, and I hope that I can elevate myself to the standards I have imposed on others.” - Mike Corbett

47. “Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. “Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper. The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes. “You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man. “Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.” “I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.” “So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?” “Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?” Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock. “He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor. “Who is he?” “A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.” - Jeff Phillips

48. “Cynicism is extremely contagious, and the most pious among us cannot long endure its potency. The gullible should be on their guard, however, since this endearing quality frequently masquerades as wit.” - Mike Corbett

49. “I replied that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food, more than its inhabitants are able to consume, ... But, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, from whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, freethinking,” - Jonathan Swift

50. “...Come on let’s see the degree.” Katherine unrolled her scroll displaying a long declaration in Latin affixed with a red seal proclaiming her a Master of Art. “Imagine working for years to obtain a piece of paper we can hardly read ” Katherine joked. “And to officially declare you have talent ” Suzy returned.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

51. “Eric, you need to look at the whole picture," the PM said. "You look at the jobless as a huge pile of scrap and you're looking for what can be recycled. That's good. That's your job. But what you don't realise is that this pile of scrap itself serves a purpose. I need my zeros, Eric. They put fear in people; fear of crime and terrorism. They are a stark reminder to the stakeholders that what they despise today, they may end up joining tomorrow. It keeps them obedient. Remember that!” - Mark Cantrell

52. “Like vampires and extremely rich people, black folk can sense one another. Use your Spidey Sense (Blacky Sense?). Use your blackdar to inspect the workplace for signs of Other Negroes. They may be working security for the building. They may be in administrative support. They may be among the associate pool, or they may even be in upper management. Black folk can be anywhere. After all, you're here. But one of the biggest mistakes you can make as The Black Employee is to assume you are the only one.” - Baratunde Thurston

53. “We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. "No one sees the barn," he said finally. A long silence followed. "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies." There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. "Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism." Another silence ensued. "They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.” - Don DeLillo

54. “The worst mistake a writer can make is to assume everyone has an imagination.” - Andrew McEwan

55. “For you, my darlings, freedom to do what you like is the discovery of how unlikable what you like to do makes you. Not that that stops you doing what you like, since you like doing what you like more than you like liking what you do...[Lucifer]” - Glen Duncan

56. “Alice is fictional. This isn't.” - Jess C. Scott

57. “The ultimate downfall of the computerized holographic receptionist was that there was no amount of flattery, flirtation or chocolate that could convince one to lie for you.” - Scott B. Pruden

58. “By the standards of a tourist strolling past looking for a quick lunch, the place was a dive. The sign on the window was small and easy to miss, and the antique feel of the place wasn't the prepackaged, old-shit-on-the-wall nostalgia that came with so many chain restaurants. The cafe was just old, and everything about it said old. But Jon liked it that way, if only because it kept the tourists away and spared him from hearing imported ignorance when there was plenty of local ignorance to go around.” - Scott B. Pruden

59. “Attend to your Configuration.” - Edwin Abbott Abbott

60. “Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?” - John Kennedy Toole

61. “I hope Marcus (giggle) is there. Maybe he can defeat the evil Cullens with his mighty battle cry, "I can see relationships!!!” - Dan Bergstein

62. “Kara knew all he recognized was T and A on a string and he was nothing more than a sleazy puppeeter , so long as there were souls for sale he was ready to buy ..” - Saira Viola

63. “We're all prostitutes sir we're all selling ourselves for something” - Saira Viola

64. “...they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve, and if you do, you never get the results you expected.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

65. “It takes a lot of wind to sail a leaky boat.” - Tom Morrison

66. “A dutiful wife enables a good man to add her hands to his own for self-applause.” - Tom Morrison

67. “She is probably by this time as tired of me, as I am of her; but as she is too Polite and I am too civil to say so, our letters are still as frequent and affectionate as ever, and our Attachment as firm and sincere as when it first commenced.” - Jane Austen

68. “When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.” - Salman Rushdie

69. “My therapist told me that I over-analyze everything. I explained to him that he only thinks this because of his unhappy relationship with his mother.” - Michel Templet

70. “Jersey Shore has killed more brain cells than alcohol, cocaine, and meth combined.” - Michel Templet

71. “General assumptions often lead to erroneous conclusions, but one cannot go far wrong in always assuming that whatever one's government is saying is a lie.” - Michel Templet

72. “What gets me most about these people, Daddy, isn't how ignorant they are, or how much they drink. It's the way they have of thinking that everything nice in the world is a gift to the poor people from them or their ancestors. The first afternoon I was here, Mrs. Buntline made me come out on the back porch and look at the sunset. So I did, and I said I liked it very much, but she kept waiting for me to say something else. I couldn't think of what I was supposed to say, so I said what seemed like a dumb thing. "Thank you very much," I said. That is exactly what she was waiting for. "You're entirely welcome," she said. I have since thanked her for the ocean, the moon, the stars in the sky, and the United States Constitution.” - Kurt Vonnegut

73. “Maud: Young women are never happy.Betty: Mother, what a thing to say.Maud: Then when they're older they look back and see that comparatively speaking they were ecstatic.” - Caryl Churchill

74. “You stick a bunch of drunken murderers together, ain't long before some turn to thieving, then to lying, then to bad language, and pretty soon to sobriety, raising families and making an honest living.” - Joe Abercrombie

75. “Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,And solid pudding against empty praise. Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,Till genial Jacob, or a warm third day,Call forth each mass, a poem, or a play:How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie,How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry.” - Alexander Pope

76. “He'd been given an assignment to write about teen beauty pageants [...], which he'd accepted because he enjoyed blood sports as much as the next person.” - David Baldacci

77. “By and large, the mission of any ghost is to offer humility. They point out what's important by mocking what is not.(Joshua Malina, Sports Night)” - Aaron Sorkin

78. “Oh, I don’t mean to infer that you’re not a great guy. I’m sure you’re the exception to the rule.” - Jaye Frances

79. “Probably went swimming and got eaten by a pineapple.” - Terry Pratchett

80. “My great-great grandfather and I were the best of friends, although we never met” - Raji Singh

81. “My great-great grandfather and I were best of friends, although we never met.Fire and shipwreck orphan us – 140 years apart. We escape to imagination to survive our fate. There, midst flights of whimsy we find one another. Companionship quells our loneliness. We create fables and tales, shields against a harsh existence. We must battle animals and humans of prey.Together, he, the future abolitionist-publisher James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, and I vault from glory-laden adventures to tragedy and then to triumph. I am Raji Singh and this is my story.” - Raji Singh

82. “Mitt Romney's first interview with Zombie Reagan: Mitt Romney came in with cheerful assurance, because he wasn’t capable of anything else. “Let me first welcome you back to this side of the veil, Mr. President.”“Yeah, Mitt, it’s good to see you looking so well. Your father says hello, and he wanted me to add specially that whatever unfortunate negative things you might remember him saying to you when you were a kid, he always tried to tell you the truth and he hopes you’ve used it to improve, and he understands that even with the help of those comments, it might just not have been in you to improve. He wants you to remember he still loves you no matter what you’ve become, or even if you haven’t chosen to become any one thing in particular.”“That’s very kind. I miss my dad even now.”“Oh, so do I. I remember George as always that kind of guy, he had your back, whenever you’d think to watch your back, you’d find him somewhere around there, ready for action with that knife already drawn.” - john barnes

83. “When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.” - Mark Twain

84. “What is the secret of life?’ I asked.‘I forget,’ said Sandra.‘Protein,’ the bartender declared. ‘They found something out about protein.‘‘Yeah,’ said Sandra, ‘that’s it.” - Kurt Vonnegut

85. “I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells; a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and often, when there is nothing in the world at the bottom, besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass however for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark.” - Jonathan Swift

86. “Do…you…have…a…hard…time…finding…Steve’s dick?” she enunciated, enjoying Mary’s extreme discomfort. “He’s big as a fuckin’ house so I imagine it might be a bit of a problem.” The New Jersey accent that was still there after more than fifteen years in the south, resurfaced in her aggravation.” - A.T. Hicks

87. “Murder is only killing in the wrong place.” - Pat Barker

88. “In Russia, drunks are our kindest people. Our kindest people are also the most drunk.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

89. “Something refused to come into focus in my thinking. Indistinctly, as though in a fog, shapes moved toward me and retreated just beyond cognition. But that getting a hold of things is the uncertainty. As the Tractatus says right at the beginning, “The world is everything that is the case.” It seemed as though the Mammy≈Divas® were just like Steve Jobs, trying to have reality bent to their own wills. Objectively, the iPhone was a muddle of mysticism and logic—breakable glass, non-ergonomic design, lousy battery life, lousy irreplaceable battery, lousy headphone jack, lousy virtual keyboard, lousy email, lousy memory, lousy lice, etc., etc, and an interface that you had to adapt to by pretending as an article of faith that no adaptation was required. The Mammy≈Divas® promised a seamless racial interface—eternal blackness ordered and majestic. They put a benign face on their lust for panoptic power. They promised to discipline and punish with pancakes.” - Jon Woodson

90. “Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now. And as I had ventured to take the whip of the satirist into my hand, I went beyond the iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an onslaught also on other vices;--on the intrigues of girls who want to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to cheat the public into buying their volumes.” - Anthony Trollope

91. “Всяка власт, която се отдалечава от народа, пада като дърво отсечено в корена.” - Петко Р. Славейков

92. “Fifteen years ago, this would have been insider trading, but that quaint concept had disappeared a decade or two ago when so many brokers were doing it that it was impossible to jail them all. Now it was called smart trading.” - Max Barry

93. “Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.” - Jane Austen

94. “Well, fame is a drug and when you take it away from an addict, things can get ugly.” - Melissa Jo Peltier

95. “Today’s generation didn’t want to watch ancient actors reciting the same tired lines. They wanted to see themselves reflected onscreen –rude, raw, entitled. These kids needed to believe that they themselves were only one daring, controversial act away from being up on that screen themselves. ” - Melissa Jo Peltier

96. “After we deal and heal...NOT A A SHRED OF EVIDENCE EXISTS THAT LIFE IS SERIOUS.....Jan Marshall” - Jan Marshall

97. “You wanna know why the world is f**ked? This is why, this is exactly why…right here. Get a pen, write this down, this is important…The world is f**ked up because I eat WonderBread preserved with formaldehyde that lasts three weeks and will never grow mold as long as it’s kept in its magic silver bag. The world is f**ked up because I know my cans of tuna have mercury in it. The world is f**ked up because I know my flake light tuna and WonderBread are poisonous, yet I still eat them!” - Shannon Lyndsy

98. “I believe in Supreme Being, a Creator, whoever he may be, it's of no importance to me, who put us here on earth to do our duty as citizens and fathers; but I don't need to go to church and kiss silver platters and dig into my pocket to fatten up a lot of humbugs who eat better than you or I do! Because he can be worshiped just as well in a wood, a field, or even just gazing at the ethereal vault, like the ancients.” - Gustave Flaubert

99. “But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.” - Terry Pratchett