“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

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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E.L. Doctorow 25

novelist, editor, professor 1931–2015

Paul Conrad (1924–2010) German theologian

As cited in Lordan, Edward J. (2006). Politics, Ink: How America's Cartoonists Skewer Politicians, from King George III to George Dubya. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 135.

“You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Introduction, p. 16
Everything Is Under Control (1998)

“We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Moore’s Life of Lord Byron (1830)

“Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

Source: The Essential Lenny Bruce: his original unexpurgated satirical routines

“Those who cannot find [moral clarity] are likely to settle for the far more dangerous simplicity, or purity, instead.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (2008)

“The truths of naturalism do not satisfy the moral and religious nature.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: Accepting the Universe (1920), p.301

“Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth - and so be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Truth and consequences (p. 26)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“In highly charged political matters, one person's ambiguity may be another person's truth.”

Richard Mottram (1946) British civil ervant

February 1985, as a prosecution witness in the case against Clive Ponting Norton-Taylor, Richard. 'Sir Richard Mottram http://politics.guardian.co.uk/byers/story/0,11320,656525,00.html, The Guardian (25 February 2002).

“Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion (1842).

“Selfishness, eager for a heaven of enjoyment, is quite a different thing in the soul from love and purity and truth, yearning together for what is their natural element.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 302.

“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.”

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E.L. Doctorow 25

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