Famous Ben Hecht Quotations

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"In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel."
by Ben Hecht
"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."
by Ben Hecht
"Movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century. Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them -- as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people."
by Ben Hecht
"I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer."
by Ben Hecht
"When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy."
by Ben Hecht
"I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt."
by Ben Hecht
"Alex Sebastian: Mother, mother. Mrs. Sebastian: Why are you up so early?..."
by Ben Hecht
"Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talli..."
by Ben Hecht


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