Quotes By Orson Welles

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

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

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

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

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.

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 best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one!

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.

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

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

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

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.

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

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