Irony Quotes - Page 7

• The British Airways steward announced that the in-flight movie would be Chariots of Fire. 'Is that the only one?' I asked. 'We are also showing Gandhi,' he replied. 'Where do I have to sit to see it?" I responded. 'I'm sorry, sir, but Gandhi is only showing in first class.' The irony seemed to escape him.

  Jim Wallis

  Sorry, Class, Fire

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• If you make exercise your hobby instead of your enemy it becomes your friend; it's the one thing that will never let you down. It will always be there for you and it will always make you better than you were before. Remember: every time you go to the gym, every time you put the right supplement in your mouth, you're better than you were ten minutes ago. [...] The irony is most people know what to do, they just don't do what they know.

  Sylvester Stallone

  Exercise, People, Enemy

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• I don't think it's aiming at gags, I think the humour is woven into it. It's part of how the characters operate and how they deal with disaster because they're worldly enough to have a bit of irony and wryness about their own circumstances. So, I think the humour comes out of that.

  Colin Firth

  Character, Thinking, Woven

  "Then She Found Me - Colin Firth interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I don't think irony is about judgment; I think irony is something like, "Oh, that's interesting," because it's not something I think one starts off to achieve. I think it's just something that presents itself. And if it does, I find it's usually optimistic, not negative in its terms.

  Jeff Koons

  Optimistic, Thinking, Interesting

  Interview with David Colman, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 23, 2008.

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• In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Strong, Laughter

  "The Simple Art of Murder," Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1944

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• It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Bullying, Hate, Expression

  "Rushdie and After" by David Remnick, www.newyorker.com. September 16, 2012.

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• The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don't push it.

  Jamie Zawinski

  Maximum, Universe

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• Part of the irony of environmentalism is questing for solutions when you know you're part of the problem.

  Diane Ackerman

  Problem, Knows, Solutions

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds”, p.156, Vintage

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• The culture of irony is the culture of postmodernism, which I would furiously want to denounce. We have to act ethically and politically. Irony is a defensive position, against reality. It always knows what to think about reality. The idea of commitment and engagement is central to me, which is not ironic.

  Simon Critchley

  Commitment, Reality, Thinking

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• There's a floating distraction in the contemporary world, life at a distance enabled by technology. I want people to commit at the level of their subjectivity. The idea of subjective commitment is at the core of ethics, something that divides the self from itself. I become an ethical self. I cannot meet that ideal, I cannot fulfill it, it divides me from myself and it makes me strive harder. This ideal subjective ethical drive is at the heart of an absolutely earnest, radical politics that insists that people will be able to engage with each other, and they're lifted from irony at that point.

  Simon Critchley

  Distance, Commitment, Heart

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• From the start, I've always admired Eminem's thinking. That's the reason I wanted to appear on the Grammys with him when I was asked. Eminem has the balls to say what he feels and to make offensive things funny. That's very necessary today in America, with people being muzzled and irony becoming a lost art. Artists like Eminem who use their free speech to get a point across are vitally important. There just aren't many people in the world with balls that big and talent that awesome.

  Elton John

  Art, Thinking, America

  "Eminem's Homophobic 'Rap God' Lyrics Spark Media Frenzy". www.hollywoodreporter.com. October 18, 2013.

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• The greatest irony in the world is that you are so blessed and don't know it.

  Esther Hicks

  Blessed, World, Knows

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• We lost faith in authority in the '50s, up to a point, and we spawned a lot of anti-heroes in movies, which were refreshing and open. But at this point, with the distrust that's there and the disillusionment with leadership that is so acute, we need some kind of a focus on taking the irony out and taking the anti-hero element away.

  Brendan Gleeson

  Hero, Focus, Needs

  Source: collider.com

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• Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool.

  Iris Murdoch

  Pain, Sleep, Laughing

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.80, Penguin

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• One of the outstanding ironies of history is the utter disregard of ranks and titles in the final judgments men pass on each other. The final estimate of men shows that history cares not an iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only the quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart.

  Samuel Logan Brengle

  Character, Heart, Men

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• Van Gogh was so under appreciated in his time, he sold only one of his 900 paintings while alive. Posthumously, he became one of the most famous artists of all time and his work is now considered priceless. Oh the irony.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Artist, Alive, Priceless

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• History, in the end, becomes a form of irony.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Ends, Form

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• I really think [the Bush Administration]'s foreign policy agenda is to spread irony through the world.

  Jon Stewart

  Thinking, Agendas, World

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• If I had to catalog all the moronic plot turns in The Day After Tomorrow, we'd be here until the next ice age. It's just so very bad. You can have a pretty good time snickering at it-unless, like me, you think there's something to this global warming thing, and you shudder at the irony of a movie meant to warn people about a dangerous environmental trend that completely discredits it. Is it possible that the film is a plot to make environmental activists look as wacko as anti-environmentalists always claim they are?

  David Edelstein

  Thinking, Ice, People

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• I hate irony, particularly when it is used because there isn't any message or to hide that someone hasn't any story to tell. Just like when someone only spews out a stack of cool words which don't mean anything and then has the gall to call it art. I always want to create a bridge between us and the listener, and I want it to be so that kids want to create for themselves a story or a context of the words.

  Jack White

  Art, Hate, Mean

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• The boys in the office preferred Daft Punk and the song "Robot Rock" as an anthem, speaking excitedly and without irony about wanting to become robots one day. That made me wonder: Why? What's the pull of being a robot?

  Katherine Losse

  Song, Boys, Rocks

  Katherine Losse (2012). “The Boy Kings: A Journey Into the Heart of the Social Network”, p.57, Simon and Schuster

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• You can't use irony as a way of disengaging with the difficult or emotional aspects of life.

  D.A. Wallach

  Emotional, Use, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• People have different ideas, emotional ideas, of what certain words mean, and they think of irony as something that's more associated with being cynical-it's kind of a put-down.

  Jeff Koons

  Mean, Emotional, Thinking

  Interview with David Colman, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 23, 2008.

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• Most Russians don't treat the government, or those in power, as something close to them. They don't believe that they, as ordinary people, are able to change the development of things. That's why they have a very specific ironic sentiment towards power and the figures that represent it. I wanted to translate this irony into the cinematic language.

  Andrey Zvyagintsev

  Believe, Government, People

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Americans don't understand irony? I am an intelligent person living in the United States. My entire existence is ironic.

  Marc Maron

  Intelligent, Ironic, United States

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