Quotes from Ted Rall

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

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

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.

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.

Anyone should be able to read comics.

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

I'm a better polemicist in prose.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

What you read at Columbia is Plato's Republic and Homer's Iliad. What you learn at Columbia is that reading isn't education. Education is figuring out the hard way that at a school like Columbia, what you read isn't nearly as important as what you wear, how you look, and how much you know about sucking up to professors who really couldn't give a shit about whether some nameless, faceless kid in the 23rd row will work or starve after graduation.

The purpose of revolution is to abolish unnecessary suffering.

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.

If the U.S. government is going to collapse anyway, it behooves us to first replace it with something that can stand in its place. Unless we act, we'll have to deal with a post-collapse scenario, in which we'll have to fend off roving criminal gangs, hoodlums, predatory corporations, oppressive residual government entities, and an emboldened political right.

Is the threat of a right-wing takeover real? I think so. I think it has been real for decades; racist and nativist extremism is closely interwoven in our national fabric. But of course it's impossible to know whether the far right can seize power.

As Jean-Paul Sartre said, we are the sum total of our actions. What is in our hearts does not matter.

Once created, a power vacuum will be filled, whether by you or some asshole.