Orson Welles Quotes
"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
(Related: Women, Civilization, Eating, Girlfriends, Order)
"I've always found it very sanitary to be broke."
- Orson Welles
"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
(Related: Act, Theater, Want)
"They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Today)
"I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Time, Artist)
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Ending, Want)
"Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck."
- Orson Welles
(Related: People, Justice, Luck)
"I started at the top and worked my way down."
- Orson Welles
"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
(Related: Time, Idea, Artist, Being, Hate)
"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
(Related: Truth, Feeling, Theatre)
"I have an unfortunate personality."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Personality)
"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Eating, Hate, Television)
"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
(Related: Politicians, Popularity, Senate)
"Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Nature, Hate, Human nature, Race)
"The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Successful)
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Art, Absence, Enemy, Limitations)
"The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Age, Life, Society, Class, Enemy, Middle age, Middle class)
"The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Laws)
"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
(Related: Friendship, Love, Illusion)
"When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Friends, Noses)
"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
(Related: HusbGirlfriend, Fool)
"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Act, Man, Reason, Temper)
"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
(Related: Flying)
"Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one!"
- Orson Welles
(Related: Genius)
"A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Artist, Wrong)
"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Country)
"At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable."
- Orson Welles
"Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Style)
"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
(Related: Money, Class)
"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
(Related: Being, Dumb, Famous)
"Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Heart, Actor)
"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Eye, Film)
"Fake is as old as the Eden tree."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Old)
"Gluttony is not a secret vice."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Gluttony, Vice)
"Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest."
- Orson Welles
"Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Ecstasy)
"Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre."
- Orson Welles
"Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Purpose, Hollywood)
"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
(Related: Christmas, Now, Old)
"Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Now, Order, Quotations, Shakespeare)
"Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Politics, People, Dumb, Want)
"I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Pretty)
"I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could."
- Orson Welles
"I don't pray because I don't want to bore God."
- Orson Welles
(Related: God, Want)
"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
(Related: Money, Work, Posterity)
"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people."
- Orson Welles
(Related: People)