A Quote by Ricky Gervais
I think you can make fun of anything except things people can't help. They can't help their race or their sex or their age, so you ridicule their pretension or their ego instead. You can ridicule ideas - ideas don't have feelings. You can ridicule an idea that someone holds without hurting them.
Related Quotes
No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them.
While I ridicule books of self-help, I'm also quite susceptible to them. They help simplify things.
We need to make fun of and ridicule the media images that seek to keep us down, divide us against each other by age, class, and race, and insist that we spend so much psychic energy on our faces, clothes and bodies that nothing is left for ideas, social change, or politics.
I long ago vowed, as Batman did before me, never to make fun of stuff that people couldn't help. Because it's (1) easy and (2) not fair. There are plenty of things that people have complete control over that are worthy of ridicule.
To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize? and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.
Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
Ridicule is also a weapon against forces of evil. Really clever, intelligent ridicule.
No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.
I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.
Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
A law which attempts to say you can criticise and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.
In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
Ridicule has historically proven itself a rickety fence for great ideas.
I run into a lot of people who are instantly filled with ridicule at the idea that someone wouldn't eat meat.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.
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