Ted Rall Quotations

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

I think Dilbert is actually a radical strip.

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

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

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

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

Most people don't know how to tell stories.

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

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

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

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.

I used to wake up every day and think of some way he'd slighted me. Now that I've sent this thing out into the world I hardly ever think about my Dad.

It's funny, because politically Spiegelman and I don't come from that different a place, but I view his approach as being intellectually dishonest.

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.

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

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.

Anyone should be able to read comics.

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.

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.

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

I'm a better polemicist in prose.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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