Famous Orson Welles Quotations

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"Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there."
by Orson Welles
"The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism."
by Orson Welles
"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."
by Orson Welles
"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."
by Orson Welles
"In Italy for thirty 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 five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
by Orson Welles
"A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet"
by Orson Welles
"A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong."
by Orson Welles
"A poet needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a filmmaker an army"
by Orson Welles
"as close to a genius as anyone I have ever met."
by Orson Welles
"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."
by Orson Welles
"Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid."
by Orson Welles
"Gluttony is not a secret vice."
by Orson Welles
"I hate television. I hate it as much as I hate peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."
by Orson Welles
"I passionately hate the idea of being with it. I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."
by Orson Welles
"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."
by Orson Welles
"In Italy for thirty 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 five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce The cuckoo clock."
by Orson Welles
"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people."
by Orson Welles
"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."
by Orson Welles
"Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations."
by Orson Welles
"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."
by Orson Welles
"Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature."
by Orson Welles
"There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women."
by Orson Welles
"When you are down and out something always turns up-and it is usually the noses of your friends."
by Orson Welles
"Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one!"
by Orson Welles
"Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one!"
by Orson Welles
"The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left."
by Orson Welles
"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 senat."
by Orson Welles
"I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it -- yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don't give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by."
by Orson Welles
"I don't say that we ought to all misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could."
by Orson Welles
"I don't pray because I don't want to bore God."
by Orson Welles
"Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation."
by Orson Welles
"Hollywood died on me as soon as I got there"
by Orson Welles
"I Schweiz har dom haft broderskärlek, femhundra år av demokrati och fred - och vad har dom åstadkommit? Gökuret!"
by Orson Welles
"I would just like to mention Robert Houdin who in the eighteenth century invented the vanishing birdcage trick and the theater matinee - may he rot and perish. Good afternoon."
by Orson Welles
"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."
by Orson Welles
"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 girl friends. And they tolerated it and let us go ahead and play with our toys."
by Orson Welles
"After the first couple of months, she and Charlie didn't see much of each other except at breakfast. It was a marriage just like any other mar..."
by Orson Welles
"Captain Quinlan: When this case is over, I'll come around some night and sample some of your chili. Tanya: Better be careful. May be too ..."
by Orson Welles
"Elsa Bannister: The Chinese say 'It is difficult for love to last long; therefore one who loves passionately is cured of love, in the end.'"
by Orson Welles
"Thatcher: Now tell me honestly, my boy. Don't you think it's rather unwise to continue this philanthropic enterprise, this Inquirer that's cos..."
by Orson Welles


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