Orson Welles Quotes, Thoughts and images

Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.

I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out

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

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.

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

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

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

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

I started at the top and worked my way down.

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.

People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas.

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

The cinema has no boundary; it is a ribbon of dream.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

A man is not from where he is born, but where he chooses to die.

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

I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.

Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It's the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore.

There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.

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

A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.

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

I'm not basically a happy person, but I have all kinds of joy.

Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.

What's happening now is what happened before, and often what's going to happen again sometime or other

Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing.

Criticism is the essence of creation.

Computers combine things to make new knowledge at such high speed that we cannot absorb it.

The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.

Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.

'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.

A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day. We need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves.

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

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