Orson Welles Quotes

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.

Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.

I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.

n Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There’s a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don’t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.

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.

People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas.

Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.

I can think of nothing that an audience won’t understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.

Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn’t be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You’re a lawbreaker. It’s just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society, you see?

Criticism is the essence of creation.

Never expect justice in this world. That is not part of God’s plan. Everybody thinks that if they don’t get it, they’re some kind of odd man out. And it’s not true. Nobody gets justice – people just get good luck or bad luck.

What’s happening now is what happened before, and often what’s going to happen again sometime or other

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.

Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.