180 Quotes by Michael Leunig

In nicey-nicey land, you must be happy-clappy and positive all the time - bad news is taboo.

You wouldn't wish hardship on anyone, but when it comes, you would be crazy not to see the huge growth that will come from it.

I increasingly wonder whether most humans are in a constant state of unconsciously fearing each other. Perhaps they fear how intimately different other people might be to them, and the problem is that there is no real way of finding out just how huge that difference might be.

While there are many experts in the psychoanalysis of individuals, there seems to be little active authority or understanding in the matter of the persistent shared madness in everyday life. It's as if collective mental illness doesn't exist except in the vernacular and in contemporary folk myth, where it remains trapped and politically useless.

I have sometimes done cartoons that are hurtful to people - immature, spiteful stuff. Some are so self-indulgent, and some have just failed. I look back and sometimes cringe. But one regret as I get older is that I haven't been radical and wild enough.

Of all the seasons, winter is the most conducive to the great art of dormancy. This art requires an appreciation of semi-consciousness: the beautiful and necessary prelude to sleep - a special pleasure in itself that is all too often neglected, under-valued or looked down upon.

I must warn you right here and now that I am a 'wet leftie,' a 'leftist' and also a member of the 'bleeding heart liberal left.' I had no say in it whatsoever. I woke up one morning, and these things were tattooed across my forehead.

Democracy just isn't working any more; without sanity at its heart, it is becoming a most unique and fiendish tyranny.

In contemporary art culture, where good looks and clever strategic planning of art careers have become a feature, professional practice may be taught in art schools like a branch of public relations or political science.