Top 51 Irreverence Quotes & Sayings

Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now - to quote myself at my most pretentious - is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

We need to restore the spirit of irreverence in music.

A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.

We're never going to please everyone, but all the great Jewish comics have succeeded through irreverence and self deprecation.

If we had reverence for our life, our life would take at once religious form. But as it is, in our filthy irreverence, it remains a disgusting slough, where each one of us goes so thoroughly disguised in dirt that we are all alike and indistinguishab

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

With a character like a Captain Jack, who can essentially set up these verbal land mines around him, and just keep passing the "absurdity ball" around and the "irreverence ball" around, and keep people guessing and keep people confused, there's great safety in that. Me, myself, personally, I learn from it. It's a real pleasure, and I do need him.

Every act of irreverence for life, every act which neglects life, which is indifferent to and wastes life, is a step towards the love of death. This choice man must make at every minute. Never were the consequences of the wrong choice as total and as irreversible as they are today. Never was the warning of the Bible so urgent: 'I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live.'

Being a founder is about being so driven to distraction by the world that you want to put something new in it. It's an act of creation, of irreverence, of defiance, of hope, and arguably one of narcissism.

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest.

Irreverence is an essential part of our culture.

One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.

I don't know that I would host the Golden Globes or the Emmys because I don't think they have the appreciation for irreverence that the Critics Choice does.

In my view, it’s irreverence, foolish confidence and naivety combined with persistence, open mindedness and a continual ability to learn that created Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, Juniper, AOL, Sun Microsystems and others.

for me the most fun of my career is to bring a little bit of irreverence to characters. And, you know, I don't think that the producers were expecting me to be as irreverent as I am.

The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism.

A lot of '20s musicals were a hodgepodge of melodrama, mixed with operetta and romance, and then some sense of modernism and some sense of irreverence.

Irreverence is easy - whats hard is wit.

All reporters have a stripe of irreverence in their mental makeup. It usually keeps them from turning into toadies, a danger for those who associate, even in an adversarial way, with the rich and powerful.

In my view, it's irreverence, foolish confidence and naivety combined with persistence, open mindedness and a continual ability to learn that created Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, Juniper, AOL, Sun Microsystems and others.

Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him?

Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.

In today's world where, more than ever, the ongoing concentration of money and power in the hands of a self-selected few, relies on political and public apathy, Live My Life provides a much needed shot of timely, thought-provoking, musically forward, irreverence to the status quo.

A little bit of irreverence is necessary to have any self-esteem at all. Not irreverence for people, but rather, for what other people think.

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.

Irreverence is a way of playing hooky and remaining present at the same time.

However common irreverence and profanity become, they are nonetheless wrong

I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.

I've always loved David Letterman. There was an irreverence to his show that I remember, especially in 'Late Night' - it always seemed so fresh.

Yeah, yeah, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye type of thing. There's that kind of irreverence to it the humor and in the reality of what's really going on that plays into this movie.

The 'gallows' are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism.

A little irreverence is always important to being a columnist. I try to do that.

Irreverence is a declaration of independence.

The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator.

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.

People are always saying, 'You use irony,' and it's like, actually, we don't use irony: we use wit and playfulness and irreverence.

Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit.

True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.

I think that the attraction to camp is its irreverence, it's strange, it in no way reflects reality while using real characters.

Irreverence is our only sacred cow.

Live My Life provides a much needed shot of timely, thought-provoking, musically forward, irreverence to the status quo.

Irreverence ran on both sides of our family...my parents brought me up to think we could all change the world.

I feel like my music stands for the ultimate statement of irreverence.

What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.

Irreverence not only shows disrespect to Deity but also makes it hard for the Spirit to teach us the things we need to know.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

On previous occasions when God incarnated on earth, the bliss of recognising Him in the incarnation was vouchsafed only after the physical embodiment had left the world, in spite of plenty of evidences of His Grace. But, ponder a moment on this Sathya Sai Manifestation; in this age of rampant materialism, aggressive disbelief and irreverence, what is it that brings to It the adoration of millions from all over the world? You will be convinced that the basic reason for this is the fact that this is the Supra-worldly Divinity in Human Form.

New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur.