Simplicity is a difficult thing to achieve.

Simplicity of approach is always best.

One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.

In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. 

Machinery should be a blessing to mankind and not a curse.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with man.

The world is not composed of heroes and villains, but of men and women with all the passions that God has given them. The ignorant condemn, but the wise pity.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.

Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watch-tower on the look-out for incidents that may excite the imagination – music, a sunset, may give image to an idea.

The persecution of any minority is inhuman and unnatural. That belief is timeless and beyond change.

How does one get ideas? By sheer perseverance to the point of madness.

Beauty is the spirit of all things, an exaltation, a psalm of life and death, of good and evil, of vileness and purity, of joy and pain, of hate and love—all of it incarnate in the object we see or hear. It is an empathy, a feeling into art or nature that we observe—all of it a singing harmony to our senses.

Making fun is serious business.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

Too much kindness and respect are given to the unseen and not enough to humanity. It seems that in our nature we loathe each other and bestow our respect and love on the abstract.

That which is apparent ends. That which is subtle is never-ending.

Wisdom usually grows up on us like calluses when we are old, gnarled and bent.

A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.

Art was an additional emotion applied to skillful technique.

In the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

A man is what a woman makes him and a woman makes herself.

I have yet to know a poor man who has nostalgia for poverty.

The world cannot be wrong if in this world there's you.

I neither believe nor disbelieve anything.

Faith is a precursor of all our ideas.

I am what I am: an individual, unique and different.

I've arrived at the age where a platonic friendship can be sustained on the highest moral plane.

“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

“In the end, everything is a gag.”

“I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

“That’s the trouble with the world. We all despise ourselves.”

“I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.”

“Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.” 

 “Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.”

“Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.”

“I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.”

“Patriotism is too deep a feeling to depict in the posing for a photograph.”

“Why should poetry have to make sense?

“The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.” 

“In the light of our egos, we are all dethroned monarchs.”

“You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!

“I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.”

“Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

“I’d sooner be called a successful crook than a destitute monarch.

“I believe in the power of laughter and tears as an antidote to hatred and terror.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it surely shall be yours. 

Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose. 

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.