Top 35 Ralph Steadman Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There’s no such thing as a mistake, really. It’s just an opportunity to do something else.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

3. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

5. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

6. “Animal Farm has seen off all the opposition. It’s as valid today as it was fifty years ago.”

— Ralph Steadman

7. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

8. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

9. “Isolationism is over.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

11. “There is no truly global justice.”

— Ralph Steadman

12. “Man’s idea of God, and a God’s collusion, is an essential part of the equation to wage war.”

— Ralph Steadman

13. “God invented mankind because he loved silly stories.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

17. “Suspicion and doubt lead to animosity and hatred.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

19. “I see if I can make human beings look like reptiles.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

24. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

26. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

27. “I’ve done the Rolling Stones eating each other.”

— Ralph Steadman

28. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

29. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

33. “Like you do about Nelson Mandela, you can’t help feeling the guy’s a good man.”

— Ralph Steadman

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

— Ralph Steadman

35. “You know, we’re really destroying ourselves because we’re really making the motivating force of anything we do selfish.”

— Ralph Steadman

36. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman

37. “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.”

— Ralph Steadman