Alec Guinness Quotes

A person who is keen to shake your hand usually has something up his sleeve.

Essentially, I'm a small-part actor who's been lucky enough to play leading roles for most of his life.

An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.

All creative people hate mathematics. It's the most uncreative subject you can study.

Much of the day I have busied myself making notes on the small parts in Shakespeare, often nameless, which are rewarding to the actor if only he'll not dismiss them as beneath his dignity. If I can work it up into a talk I might call it, 'Only a cough and a spit ' -the phrase so often used by actors to explain away a lack of opportunity.

Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.

A superb tenor voice, like a silver trumpet muffled in silk.

Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one.

Styling is designing for obsolescence.

Best performance of the year: Aston Villa v. Milan, September 1994

My contribution to film has always been negligible.

That's no moon. It's a space station.

We live in an age of apologies. Apologies, fake or true, are expected from the descendants of empire builders, slave owners and persecutors of heretics, and from men who -in our eyes- just got it all wrong. So, with the age of 85 coming up shortly, I want to make an apology. It appears I must apologize for being male, white, and European.

An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.

I never knew how good it is to be unknown until now. The last time I was unknown I was too busy trying to become known to realize the advantages of obscurity.

I shrivel up every time someone mentions Star Wars to me.

I don't know what else I could do but pretend to be an actor.

The applause of all but very good men is no more than the precise measure of their possible hostility.