Quotes By Orson Welles

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I started at the top and worked my way down.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

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.

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

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

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.

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

They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.