Orson Welles was an American filmmaker, actor, and director who was one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He was a true artist, and his works continue to influence filmmakers today. His quotes are often profound and thought–provoking, offering insight into the human condition. This article will explore some of the best Orson Welles Quotes.
Orson Welles quotes from Citizen Kane
💠“I don’t know many people.” ― Susan Alexander Kane
💠“We have no secrets from our readers.” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
Navy Quotes and Sayings About Teamwork and Leadership
💠“Don’t worry about me, Gettys! Don’t worry about me! I’m Charles Foster Kane! I’m no cheap, crooked politician, trying to save himself from the consequences of his crimes!” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
💠“I don’t know how to run a newspaper, Mr. Thatcher; I just try everything I can think of.” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
💠“I entered this campaign with one purpose only, to point out and make public the dishonesty, the downright villainy of Boss Jim W. Gettys’ political machine, now in complete control of the government of this state.” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
💠“I know too many people. I guess we’re both lonely.” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
💠“If I don’t look after the interests of the underprivileged, maybe somebody else will, maybe somebody without any money or property… and that would be too bad!” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
💠“If I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
💠“Now I can afford to make some promises. The working man and the slum child know they can expect my best efforts in their interests. The nation’s ordinary citizens know that I’ll do everything in my power to protect the underprivileged, the underpaid, and the underfed.” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
💠“There’s only one person who’s going to decide what I’m going to do, and that’s me.” ― Orson Welles (Kane)
Orson Welles quotes about love and relationships
💠“A toast, Jedediah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows – his own.” ― Orson Welles
“Friendship creates only the illusion of not being alone.” ― Orson Welles
💠“Husbands should revolt from time to time. Even the best circus number becomes boring if the beast is too tame.” ― 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 girlfriends.” ― 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.” ― Orson Welles
💠“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.” ― Orson Welles
💠“When you are down and out, something always turns up – and it is usually the noses of your friends.” ― Orson Welles
Orson Welles quotes on justice, truth, and politics
💠“I discovered at the age of six that everything was a phony, worked with mirrors. Since then, I’ve always wanted to be a magician.” ― Orson Welles
💠“I don’t take art as seriously as politics.” ― Orson Welles
💠“I drag my myth around with me.” ― Orson Welles
💠“I must be sincere towards what I am. … Experimenting is the only thing that fills me with enthusiasm. … It is the only sphere where I feel really honest and sincere.” ― Orson Welles
💠“Never expect justice in this world. That is not part of God’s plan. Everybody thinks that if they don’t get it, they’re some kind of odd man out. And it’s not true.” ― Orson Welles
💠“Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.” ― Orson Welles
💠“Only very intelligent people don’t wish they were in politics, and I’m dumb enough to want to be in there.” ― Orson Welles
💠“The truth about any man can only be calculated by the sum of everything that has been said about him.” ― Orson Welles
Most Famous Orson Welles Quotes
💠“Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There’s a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don’t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.”
💠“In Italy for 30 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 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
💠“Create your own visual style. Let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.”
💠“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.”
💠“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
💠“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.”
💠“Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.”
💠“Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.”
💠“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.”
Inspirational Orson Welles Quotes About Life
💠“Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash – the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we’re going to die. ‘Be of good heart,’ cry the dead artists out of the living past. ‘Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing.”
💠“Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much.”
💠“A man is not from where he is born, but where he chooses to die.”
💠“Criticism is the essence of creation.”
💠“Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.”
💠“I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.”
💠“I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out.”
💠“I’m not basically a happy person, but I have all kinds of joy.”
💠“Living in the lap of luxury isn’t bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.”
💠“Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it Go on singing.”
💠“People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas.”
💠“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”
💠“The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.”
💠“When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.”
💠“You’re beautiful. Yes you are, you’re very very beautiful. Extremely beautiful.”
Orson Welles Quotes On Cinemas
💠“The Godfather’ was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.”
💠“I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.”
💠“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”
💠“Each multiplex has screens allocated to each studio. The screens need filling. Studios have to create product to fill their screen, and the amount of good product is limited.”
“The cinema has no boundary; it is a ribbon of dream.”
💠“The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.”
Orson Welles Quotes On Artists and Filmmakers
💠“Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can’t admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.”
💠“A good artist should be isolated. If he isn’t isolated, something is wrong.”
💠“A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.”
💠“Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.”
💠“Film is like a colony and there are very few colonists.”
💠“I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.”
💠“If everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I’d shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe very strongly in the possibilities of the 75mm.”
💠“In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.”
💠“My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.”
💠“The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.”
💠“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”
Orson Welles Quotes To Ponder
💠“Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?”
💠“I don’t want to forgive myself. That’s why I hate psychoanalysis I think if you’re guilty of something you should live with it. Get rid of it – how can you get rid of a real guilt? I think people should live with it, face up to it.”
💠“My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn’t be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You’re a lawbreaker. It’s just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society, you see?”
💠“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”
💠“Fake is as old as the Eden tree.”
💠“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.”
💠“I can think of nothing that an audience won’t understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.”
💠“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.”
💠“Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.”
💠“Only very intelligent people don’t wish they were in politics, and I’m dumb enough to want to be in there.”
💠“When you are down and out something always turns up – and it is usually the noses of your friends.”
Verdict
Orson Welles Quotes offer timeless wisdom on the craft of filmmaking, the power of art, and the importance of creativity. His words have inspired generations of filmmakers, artists, writers, and thinkers, reminding us that it is possible to create something extraordinary. His legacy will continue to live on as his work and his words continue to influence creatives around the world.