Ted Rall Quotes

#1. When you do a cartoon based on news headlines, you do it based on incomplete information.

Ted Rall

#2. At this point, American workers are pretty respectful of the bosses they loathe.

Ted Rall

#3. I'm a better editorial cartoonist by default because so many editorial cartoonists out there are so awful.

Ted Rall

#4. I don't think anyone has written a great graphic novel.

Ted Rall

#5. I'm a better polemicist in prose.

Ted Rall

#6. Orrin Hatch was the keynote speaker at the last meeting of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. He sought me out because he was a fan. I was thinking he had confused me with someone else.

Ted Rall

#7. When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

Ted Rall

#8. Money stress is what used to remind me of my Dad most.

Ted Rall

#9. I think jazz is good, but I don't enjoy it. It's not for me.

Ted Rall

#10. Do our government's poorly paid contract killers deserve our 'support' for blindly following orders?

Ted Rall

#11. I think Maus I is better than Maus II. The standard here is whether or not it's as good as a great book of prose literature and by that standard, no, it's not that great.

Ted Rall

#12. Saddam Hussein, influenced by fascism, ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of people, fought two disastrous wars, turned his nation into an international pariah and ruined his country's economy. In other words, his record is identical to George W. Bush's.

Ted Rall

#13. Up until 1995, I still had a day job that I hated. I was still personally involved in things in the 90s.

Ted Rall

#14. I think we're the first generation to successfully integrate American society.

Ted Rall

#15. Conservative humor is frankly harder than liberal humor. You get points for just being liberal. You can get more points if you make fun of your own side sometimes.

Ted Rall

#16. The best thing about being a cartoonist is to walk into a bar or someone's apartment and they don't know you, but they've taped one of your pieces up.

Ted Rall

#17. I think Dilbert is actually a radical strip.

Ted Rall

#18. Comics are too big. You can't say any kind or genre of comics is better than another. You can say so subjectively. But to say it like it's objective is wrong. It's wrong morally, because it cuts out stuff that's good.

Ted Rall

#19. But now that I'm cartooning full-time, I'm more of an observer. I'm talking to people who are experiencing these things. But it's not like being in the trenches.

Ted Rall

#20. On the ground, Pakistan is the most virulently anti-American state on the planet.

Ted Rall

#21. The first step to stringing the boss up from a lamppost is saying the boss is a moron.

Ted Rall

#22. Close friends love you for who you are; not what they want you to be.

Ted Rall

#23. Most people don't know how to tell stories.

Ted Rall

#24. Even now, years later, it's hard to tell why the government stood by and let the city of New Orleans be destroyed, dispatching troops rather than help.

Ted Rall

#25. The purpose of revolution is to abolish unnecessary suffering.

Ted Rall

#26. Even though I'm a leftist. I think the left eats its own.

Ted Rall

#27. Anyway, I tried liking Jimmy Corrigan but I couldn't.

Ted Rall

#28. Anyone should be able to read comics.

Ted Rall

#29. Life is incredibly short, yet we're always told that change takes time. For a race of mortals, dicking around just isn't acceptable.

Ted Rall

#30. The word 'hero' has been bandied about a lot to refer to anyone killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. But anyone who voluntarily goes to Afghanistan or Iraq [as a soldier] is fighting for an evil cause under an evil commander in chief.

Ted Rall

#31. Silk Road to Ruin has all the analysis and it's structured very well. I rely on my notes more and I use direct quotes. But there's nothing like writing about it right away.

Ted Rall

#32. The experts who managed the original Marshall Plan say Afghanistan needs a commitment of at least $5 to $10 billion over 5 to 10 years, coupled with occupation forces of 250,000 Allied soldiers to keep the peace throughout the country.

Ted Rall

#33. It's a perfectly valid position to not like Shakespeare.

Ted Rall

#34. I never consciously do any work directly influenced from any movie, unless I'm doing a parody.

Ted Rall

#35. If I had to rank my skills, I have a long way to go before I can write a good graphic novel.

Ted Rall

#36. Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home, the average I.Q. soared.

Ted Rall

#37. There was an honorable tradition of using anonymous sources that was ruined by Jayson Blair.

Ted Rall

#38. Trying to rebuild Afghanistan on the cheap has left the country in the hands of warlords and an impotent Northern Alliance puppet regime that runs Kabul and nothing else.

Ted Rall

#39. When you have birds you stare at them a lot and their eyes are recessed on their head. When they look at something they tilt their head in a quizzical expression.

Ted Rall

#40. Imagine foreign troops sitting idly, laughing as hooligans trashed the Smithsonian, stole the gold from Fort Knox and burned down the Department of the Interior. That was us in Iraq.

Ted Rall