Michael Leunig Quotes

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Michael Leunig

Profession : Cartoonist

Birth : June 2, 1945

Art, it seems to me, doesn't need freedom so much as it needs courage and love - some would call it 'soul' or 'Eros.'

Michael Leunig

Sadly, semi-consciousness, along with daydreaming, is a capacity that is actively discouraged among children in schools, and our society is much poorer and harsher as a consequence. The value of liminal space and transitional imagination remain personally and culturally undeveloped.

Michael Leunig

It is known that wildfires behave unpredictably - this is fundamental - but it is my experience that humans in the presence of wildfire are also likely to behave in aberrant and unpredictable ways.

Michael Leunig

The human relationship to combustion is as mysterious as it is fraught with madness. From the candle flame to the nuclear blast, it has lit up the human imagination with fear and fascination.

Michael Leunig

It's a consoling notion that death is a very tiny hole, and you need to make yourself very small to get through it. One obviously needs to lighten off, and a rucksack full of bricks or a mantelpiece full of trophies will certainly have to be abandoned - the sooner the better, I say.

Michael Leunig

The hypocrisy of some is that we like to think of ourselves as sophisticated and evolved, but we're still also driven by primal urges like greed and power.

Michael Leunig

Falling down is a very big subject, and so is the concept of downfall. None of us escapes, and I have had my share of both.

Michael Leunig

Modern man is probably a more humiliated and depressed creature than he dares to know.

Michael Leunig

Humans are nervous, touchy creatures and can be easily offended. Many are deeply insecure. They become focused and energized by taking offence; it makes them feel meaningful and alive.

Michael Leunig

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.

Michael Leunig

There is some suffering that awaits us all.

Michael Leunig

I've learned to respect the whimsical.

Michael Leunig

An education system suits some more than others. It can lead you out into life or lead you on a wild goose chase. It can help to make you miserable, or dull and nasty and insipid, or profoundly stupid in the special way that 'brainy' people can be.

Michael Leunig

I have always loved contemporary dance, but it has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But choreography is very much like what I do when you are putting characters in frame on the page. It's so impressive what they do with their bodies. It's like painting: an abstraction.

Michael Leunig

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

Michael Leunig

I think melancholy is part of the natural condition, you know. Anyway, I think it's the artist's function to have their melancholy and not hide it, you see.

Michael Leunig

People seem to take as much offence as they possibly can these days - it's almost a new type of greed, a new kind of road rage.

Michael Leunig

Practically every technology that is ever invented is touted as being the new savior, the thing that will bring peace and goodwill to the earth, but immediately it falls into other hands who see it as the opportunity to promote the very opposite.

Michael Leunig

As a cartoonist, I am not interested in defending the dominant, the powerful, the well-resourced and the well-armed because such groups are usually not in need of advocacy, moral support or sympathetic understanding; they have already organised sufficient publicity for themselves and prosecute their points of view with great efficiency.

Michael Leunig

Citizens, regardless of their political inclinations, carry a devout sense of their shared culture and its temperament - and, having contributed to it all their lives, hold decent and reasonable hopes for its continued integrity.

Michael Leunig