Orson Welles Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Orson Welles Quotes and Sayings
- 1
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 2
A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 3
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 4
At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 5
Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 6
Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 7
Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 8
Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 9
Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 10
Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one!
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 11
Fake is as old as the Eden tree.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 12
Gluttony is not a secret vice.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 13
Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 14
I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 15
I don't pray because I don't want to bore God.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 16
I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 17
I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 18
I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 19
I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 20
I have an unfortunate personality.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 21
I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 22
I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 23
I started at the top and worked my way down.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 24
I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 25
I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 26
I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 27
If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 28
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 29
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 30
Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 31
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 32
Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 33
Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 34
Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 35
Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 36
Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 37
Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 38
Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 39
Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 40
The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 41
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 42
The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 43
The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 44
The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 45
They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 46
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
- 47
When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends.
Orson Welles | Refcard PDF ↑
