Political Cartoons Quotes

Whenever anybody is pursuing power, he's got to be funny.

The Liberty League was laughed out of existence by New Yorker cartoonists, who depicted its members looking out over Fifth Avenue and snorting that doomsday was here and Josef Stalin lurked in the bushes.

Caricatures speak through visual language and are therefore understandable by all people. They trigger a laugh which is also an international language and reaction. Caricatures can decrease violence and converge cultures. They aim to promote peace, and teach us to be moderate and laugh at our problems.

In the wake of the deaths of the satirists, Je suis Charlie, I am Charlie, became a slogan of solidarity for free expression around the world.

We must defend freedom of expression and if I had to chose, I prefer the excess of caricature over the excess of censure.

Throughout our history - and that of the world - it's always come down to the friction between the haves and have-nots or between the average Joes and the large corporations. So that's a recurring theme in my work.

I wake up angry every morning and start reading [the newspapers]. Then I'm furious.

Nobody ever accused me of being objective.

Bad times for the Republic are great times for satire.

I love political cartoons from the 19th century, and whenever I complete a piece of acting work that I'm particularly proud of, be it a film or play, I treat myself to a picture by caricaturist James Gillray.

Cartoons were very conservative. The country was very conservative. Although the liberals were allegedly in charge for a long time, there was a very acceptable balance what people would talk about in public. And I wanted to stretch those and move further out. And as the civil rights movement began, I started doing cartoons on that and on sit-ins and I was, along with Bill Mauldin, a great cartoonist out of World War II, arguably one of two white cartoonists doing this kind of work, Bill and me.

There is nothing more American than dissent.

In America we don’t apologize for opinions, that’s why we have a 1st Amendment. If we can’t discuss even controversial opinions in the pages of our newspapers, where are we going to do it?

In politics there is a lot of spin—a lot of BS. My job is to cut through the BS.

I also do political cartoons, but a lot of them must stay, as they say, under the coat. But they are very fun to do, and in France, we have a good subject at the moment.

It is less dangerous to draw a cartoon of Allah French-kissing Uncle Sam — which, let me make it very clear, I have not done — than it is to speak honestly about [working moms].

I didn’t make him look like a chimpanzee. God made him look like a chimpanzee.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.

Religion and political cartoons, as you may have heard, make a difficult couple, ever since that day of 2005, when a bunch of cartoonists in Denmark drew cartoons that had repercussions all over the world - demonstrations, fatwa, they provoked violence. People died in the violence.

You’re got to be angry—of course it helps if you can draw pretty well.

I think The New Yorker's cartoons aren't very political because the people who do the cartoons aren't awfully political people, and they aren't paid to be political. I think editorial cartoonists are. That's what they do. They probably have a great natural interest in politics, and then they are paid to do it, so they sort of have to hunt out these ideas. I admire editorial cartoons, but I'm also sort of happy that I don't do them because I'd hate to have to label things and I'd especially hate, more than anything, to label something Dennis Hastert or Mark Foley.

That's the conundrum of cartoon stripping, as opposed to political cartoons. When your anger is the driving force of your drawing hand, failure follows. The anger is OK, but it has to serve the interests of the heart, frankly.

I did 32 years of political cartoons, one every day for six days a week, I wrote and drew every word, every line. That body of work is the one I'm proudest of.

I decide who's right and who's wrong, and go from there. But I can't just comment on an issue. I've got to take an editorial position. Too many cartoonists simply illustrate the news. Well, the readers know the news, and a cartoon that illustrates doesn't tell them a thing they don't already know. So, I formulate an opinion and draw it.

I'm completely fascinated by the health-care debate going on in the United States, especially by posters of Obama with a little mustache drawn on his upper lip. Is that what Hitler is really known for, his health-care plan? To quote Bill Maher, "I haven't seen this many pissed-off old white people since they cancelled 'Murder She Wrote.'"