Quotes By Pat Oliphant

We're all idealistic when young.

I've been in Washington ever since 1981, trying to get out!

So many cartoonists draw the same year after year. When they find a style, they stick with it. They don't mess with innovation, and they become boring.

I've always looked upon politics as a very boring thing. Politics never interested me as much as the people involved in it.

If it were not for the fact that editors have become so timorous in these politically correct times, I would probably have a greater readership than I have.

There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population.

One-newspaper towns are not good because all the surviving newspaper does is print money. They make 25 percent on their money every year, and if they go down to 22 percent, they start laying people off.

I see myself as an artist who happens to do cartoons.

An outsider's point of view is always handy.

There were dragons to slay in the old days. Nixon was a good dragon.

The fact that we're protected under that Constitution in exercising the right of free speech, it's a wonderful thing. You've got to come from somewhere else to realize how valuable it is.

I don't think there's more than half-a-dozen cartoons that I've been really truly happy with in all the time I've been doing it.

Some days you feel like this is really going well. You can tell. Other days, you're just drawing like a farmer and you don't know why.

Even if you go to Australia today, it's very much like visiting a state you haven't been to.

I can always see what I've done wrong. I'm always learning. I'm the perennial student.

I hate changes of administrations, because I have all my villains in place and they are all taken away and replaced with faceless wonders nobody knows.

Journalism was looked upon as a more noble thing than it is now. I don't know if it carries the same cachet that it did then.