“I think the satirist is always basically optimistic. The satirist's complaint about society is always that it doesn't measure up to a fairly high ideal he has. I think that even the bitterest satirist, even a man like Swift, was probably rather an optimist at heart.”

— John Dos Passos

Interview, Feb 3 1964, reproduced in Talks With Authors, ed. Charles F. Madden

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I think the satirist is always basically optimistic. The satirist's complaint about society is always that it doesn't m…" by John Dos Passos?

John Dos Passos 25

novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, painter 1896–1970

Related quotes

“A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible to get relief.”

John Dos Passos (1896–1970) novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, painter

"Grosz Comes to America," Esquire, 1936

“The difficulty of determining whether a man is or is not good has now become a commonplace of moralists and satirists. It is almost impossible to discover any test which is satisfactory, and the test which is actually applied by society is known to be unsatisfactory in the extreme.”

John Robert Seeley (1834–1895) British historian

pp. 57–58 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433068235500;view=1up;seq=87
Ecce Homo (1866)

“I put my books in a bag because I don't care anymore if people in the subway look at me admiringly. I can't hold on to a girl, I can't keep an office job, I make a fool of myself in my first literature class and I wonder why I left Limerick at all. […] I could have read Jonathan Swift to my heart's content not giving a fiddler's fart whether he was a satirist or a seanachie.”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§23
'Tis (2000)

“I hate being refered to as a comedian. Being a homosexual and a comedian is like being a pig and P. R. of the slaughterhouse: absurd. I'd rather consider myself a satirist. Acording to Thesaurus: a humorist who uses ridicule and irony and sarcasm… but i also puke a lot in the face of frustration; so then again i must be a supermodel.”

Miss Shangay Lily (1963–2016) Spanish artivist and drag queen

Miss Shangay Lily, Feminist Monologues for A Diva

“Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers.”

Sinclair Lewis book The Job

The Job (1917)

“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Source: How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004), Ch. 1 : It All Started with a Boy, p. 16
Context: I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life — drama, pathos and humor.

“Women think of being a man as a gift. It is a duty. Even making love can be a duty. A man has always got to get it up, and love isn't always enough.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

News summaries (31 December 1969)

“Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this.”

William Golding (1911–1993) British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Interview with James Keating, Purdue University (7 May 1961), printed in Lord of the Flies: The Casebook Edition (1964)
Context: Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.

“I'm a pessimist about probabilities, I'm an optimist about possibilities.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

As quoted in "Lewis Mumford Remembers" by Carey Winfrey in The New York Times (6 July 1977)

“A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: The Most of P.G. Wodehouse

“I think the satirist is always basically optimistic. The satirist's complaint about society is always that it doesn't measure up to a fairly high ideal he has. I think that even the bitterest satirist, even a man like Swift, was probably rather an optimist at heart.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Dos Passos 25

Related quotes

Related topics