Charlie Chaplin Quotes

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

That's the trouble with the world. We all despise ourselves.

You need Power, only when you want to do something harmful otherwise Love is enough to get everything done.

We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

In the end, everything is a gag

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.

The mirror is my best friend because when I cry it never laughs.

More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness

...The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in; machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity, more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life will be violent and all will be lost.

Simplicity is not a simple thing.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

Actors search for rejection. If they don't get it they reject themselves.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

That's what all we are: amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

The building is a special place because of its architecture; But it's people who make it special by participating in it.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.