Satirist

Anton Chekhov

Literature

Modernism

1860–1904

"The world is a fine place. The only thing wrong with it is us. How little justice and humility there is in us, how poorly we understand patriotism!"

🇺🇸P. J. O'Rourke

Literature

1947–2022

"Freddie Aguilar, who's billed as "the Bob Dylan of the Philippines." This is unfair, since he's good-looking, plays the guitar well, can carry a tune, and writes songs that make sense."

🇵🇱Stanisław Lem

Literature

1921–2006

"To replay human existence — fine, but to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune, pushing coins over and over into the jukebox?"

🇺🇸Gelett Burgess

Literature

1866–1951

"It isn't so much the heat... as the humidity."

"'Look, Felicity,' says Howard, 'there's only one rule. Follow the line of your own desires.'"

🇺🇸George William Curtis

Social Activism

1824–1892

"While we read history we make history ... Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer."

🇺🇸Tom Lehrer

Mathematics

1928–2025

"But don't panic. Base eight is just like base ten really — if you're missing two fingers."

🇺🇸Ring Lardner

Literature

1885–1933

"A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor."

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

Philosophy

Classicism

1657–1757

"Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead Tr. John Hughes"

🇮🇹Federico Fellini

Entertainment

1920–1993

"A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provided they come close together."

🇺🇸H. L. Mencken

Literature

1880–1956

"School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers."

Alexander Pope

Literature

Enlightenment

1688–1744

"Our passions are like convulsion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after."

🇷🇺Mikhail Bulgakov

Literature

prose

1951–1984

"In fact, I'm beginning to fear that this confusion will go on for a long time. And all because he writes down what I said incorrectly."

Lucian

Religion

"Everything has a beauty peculiar to itself; but if you put one instead of another, the most beautiful becomes ugly, because it is not in its proper place."

🇷🇺Yevgeny Zamyatin

Literature

1884–1937

"You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you you hate it because you are afraid of it you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved."

🇺🇸Maddox

Literature

b. 1978

"My Nuts are just under critical mass, a few inches away from collapsing into a super dense vortex of nutsaqutron ."

Molière

Literature

Classicism

1622–1673

"Moliere's Verses Plays - Publication, Statistics, Words Research"

🇿🇦Trevor Noah

Entertainment

b. 1984

"We drink to enjoy. The Scottish drink to die."

🇬🇧Jonathan Swift

Literature

1943–2010

"We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same."