Orson Welles Quotes

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.

In 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.

There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women...

A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

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

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

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

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.

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.

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.

Viele Menschen sind gut erzogen, um nicht mit vollem Mund zu sprechen, aber sie haben keine Bedenken, es mit leerem Kopf zu tun.

When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends.

Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.

Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

I drag my myth around with me.

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.