Satire

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Satire is a literary technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject (for example, individuals, organizations, or states) to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change.

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• Satire is a kind of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
  • Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books (1704).

• Satire, by being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
  • Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704).

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• In its essence the purpose of satire - whether verse or prose - is aggression ... Satire has a great big blaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center.
  • Wyndham Lewis, Not on the Verse-Satire.

• Satire should, like a polished razor keen,
  Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
  • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, To the Imitator of the First Satire of Horace, Book ii.