Top 42 Quotes & Sayings by Ralph Steadman

Man has an innate capacity for violence, but can only justify it in the name of justice.

Business should never be allowed to justify mean, thug ugly deals for any reason.

Like you do about Nelson Mandela, you can't help feeling the guy's a good man.

You see, nature will do exactly what it must, and if we are a hindrance to its development, to even its destructive powers to reform itself and we are in a way, we will go.

I have even written a book about Wine called The Grapes of Ralph.

I am an artist and have no right buggering about with verbs and split infinitives, which is what being a writer says to me.

The kids are not brought up to have minds of their own as individuals.

Man's idea of God, and a God's collusion, is an essential part of the equation to wage war.

Suspicion and doubt lead to animosity and hatred.

Governments are not running the show anymore. Scumbag Entrepreneurs are, and they have a harsh and ruthless agenda.

I've done the Rolling Stones eating each other.

God invented mankind because he loved silly stories.

Isolationism is over.

Hunter and I never got proper journalistic accreditation to go anywhere. Nobody was giving us passes to go in here or there. We always had to somehow talk our way in.

We seem to think we have some control over this planet.

You see that's what I think is such a terrible, terrible betrayal, the trust that people have in government.

I once saw a lump of Greenland breaking off into the sea and moving south, which of course will affect the atmosphere and us generally, and it'll happen more and more.

Moral authority has been laid to rest, world opinion is no more than a game show and the difference between good and evil is about as relevant as changing channels.

You know, we're really destroying ourselves because we're really making the motivating force of anything we do selfish.

Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man's restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.

There is no truly global justice.

It makes me so desperately sad to witness just how unforgivably wretched our world has become.

I get my best ideas in a thunderstorm. I have the power and majesty of nature on my side.

I see if I can make human beings look like reptiles.

Beware of privilege. It stinks of rotten fish heads, many of which were lapping the shore beneath the jetties.

'Happiness is a Small Politician' - my mantra then and forever more.

At first, I thought 'this series is going to be all about death and desecration,' but instead became a more complex landscape of human relationships. I hope I put something of these feelings into the portraits that I made of the characters, which were landscapes in themselves. An irony in the subject of crystal meth is how beautifully it resembles the desert sky.

One can derive the same fun from print-making as from making mud pies and great subtlety can be achieved through the use of transparent inks, half-tone screens and even accidental colour combinations, which is often where the art hides.

Americans live with the certain knowledge that the source of their greatness has not yet been released.

I am an artist, I trade in uncertainty and superstition and cant. I invent dark visions of impossible situations that can never be resolved.

America is ripe for lies and lethargy. The pure mountain air is going and gone. It is a huge burden and a sadness for us all.

Call immediately. Time is running out. We both need to do something monstrous before we die.

The betrayal of people's good will, good trust that things are being done for the best and they actually ARE being done for the best.

Half of art is accident, but there is no accident without free experiment.

I am ashamed of a human race that can continue to allow the sordid ambitions of politicized groups who genuinely feel that right is on their side, and can therefore instigate such atrocities in the name of their own sense of right and wrong.

What actually happened was that Rolling Stone paid me fifteen hundred dollars for the use of all the drawings - about twenty four of them - and then offered to buy the originals from me, which my agent urged 'was a good move!'. He sold the whole damn treasure trove to Jann Wenner for the princely sum of sixty dollars per drawing. I rue the day I let him convince me.

Funny thing about Americans. They are the first to adopt weird lifestyles and radical views but they are the most conservative race on earth.

There's no such thing as a mistake, really. It's just an opportunity to do something else.

Whores get bow-legged and bankers get mean, which is strange when you think that if whores get bow-legged, bankers should get generous, but they never do.

What I used to do with a passion, foolishly and vainly imagining I would change the world for the better, I no longer tolerate in myself or anyone else. But draw, always draw - and WRITE.

Animal Farm has seen off all the opposition. It's as valid today as it was fifty years ago.

Whats a gonzotic frenzy? Well its me in the throes of an ink splattering attempt to capture the feeling I have at that particular time.