Quotes By Orson Welles

The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.

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.

The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.

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.

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

At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.

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.

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

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.

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.

I don't pray because I don't want to bore God.

Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else.

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

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

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

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

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

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

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

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

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

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

I have an unfortunate personality.

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

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

I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.