Kirk Douglas Quotes

Why can't a woman be more like a dog, huh? So sweet, loving, attentive.

The best wine comes from home, wherever it is.

Life is like a B-picture script! It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I'd turn it down.

I have been trying to create a campaign to have our country make an apology for slavery, for the way that blacks were treated before the Civil War and after the Civil War.

I directed two films, not very successfully, and after that, I went back to being an actor and a producer.

If I can get enough signatures, to present an apology to slavery, I will present it to the President. The House of Representatives has already passed the resolution for the apology, but it has to pass the Senate. I think, in spite of all our problems, I think we're in the right direction.

I was living in a terrible time when people were being accused of being communists, and they attacked the movie industry, especially the writers. People couldn't work if they were on the blacklist. The studios banned them. It was the most onerous period in movie history. I don't think we have ever had a period so dark as that.

I remember little things that break my heart. We were coming out of Michael's house one day, and he noticed my shoelaces were undone. He bent down and tied them. I almost cried. To me, it was such a gesture of love.

I don't need a critic to tell me I'm an actor. I make my own way. Nobody's my boss. Nobody's ever been my boss.

The learning process continues until the day you die.

If I thought a man had never committed a sin in his life, I don't think I'd want to talk with him. A man with flaws is more interesting.

No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. So what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Moses had one, and he did all right.

When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.

What would my parents think about America if they arrived here today? Would they even want to come? I wonder.

The older you get, the more awards you get. So, if you live long enough, then you get all the awards eventually.

When I produced Spartacus, the writer was Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in jail because he would not answer McCarthy's questions about other people. He submitted the picture under the false name of Sam Jackson.

Since my stroke, I have begun to see so many miracles all around me. I look out of the window in my room: verdant grass, silver-tipped oak leaves, tall palm trees gentle swaying as they reach to the sky, masses and masses of roses. All colors, so many shapes, exquisite fragrances.

If I have to speak in public, I am terrified.

The biggest lie is the lie we tell ourselves in the distorted visions we have of ourselves, blocking out some sections, enhancing others. What remains are not the cold facts of life, but how we perceive them. That's really who we are.

When you become a star, you don't change - everyone else does.

I have always been grateful that my Russian mother and father came to this country to give me a better chance, and I have had a better chance.

You haven't learned how to live until you've learned how to give.

Now, why is it that most of us can talk openly about the illnesses of our bodies, but when it comes to our brain and illnesses of the mind we clam up and because we clam up, people with emotional disorders feel ashamed, stigmatized, and don't seek the help that can make the difference.

My children didn't have my advantages; I was born into abject poverty.

Virtue is not photogenic. What is it to be a nice guy? To be nothing, that's what. A big fat zero with a smile for everybody.

I have one computer that my wife gave me. All I know how to do, and I do it every day, is play Spider Solitaire. And I don't have a cell phone.

I never had any desire to be a film actor. I never thought I was the good-looking movie type, which I assumed they wanted.

Know what a loner is? He's a born cripple. He's a cripple because the only person he can live with is himself. It's his life, the way he wants to live. It's all for him.

My mother, we were a very poor family. When I was a kid, we would be in our little room, and there would be a knock on the door almost every night with a hobo begging for food. Even though we didn't even have enough to eat, my mother always found something to give them.

I went to Hollywood to test for Martha Ivers and I thought I was going to play the part that Van Heflin played.But they wanted me to play the part of Barbara Stanwyck's husband, so I played that. Then when I finished the movie, I went back to Broadway and did another flop.

Love has more depth as you get older.

I've played some good guys as well, in Spartacus, Paths of Glory and my favorite picture, Lonely Are the Brave, so I had a mixture of parts in my life.

Being seventy has its advantages. I was outspoken before, but now what have I got to keep quiet about?

The first time I had got an offer to come to Hollywood, I turned it down. I said, "No, I'm an actor of the stage.

Life is like a B-picture script.

I'm a loner clear down deep to my guts.

I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.

The only advantage I have found in being Jewish is that I can be openly anti-Semitic.

Unfortunately, once I did learn to smoke, I couldn't stop. I escalated to two packs a day very quickly, and stayed that way for about ten years. When I decided to stop, I adopted the method that my father had used when he quit. He would carry a cigarette in his shirt pocket, and every time he felt like smoking, he would pull out the cigarette and confront it: "Who stronger? You? Me?" Always the answer was the same: "I stronger." Back the cigarette would go, until the next craving. It worked for him, and it worked for me.

With John Wayne, we argued all the time and we made four pictures.

My mother once said, "A beggar must always give to another beggar that's worse off than he is." That has always stuck with me.

Fame is as much about luck as it is about talent, perhaps more.

I came from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.

My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free.

All children are natural actors, and I'm still a kid. If you grow up completely, you can never be an actor.

Now, what does an actor who can't talk do? Wait for silent pictures to come back?

"Hail to the Chief" was played, and the President got up and made a gracious opening remark. "I've been in this office for six years, and yet every time I hear that music, I turn around wondering who they're playing it for."

I think that [Barack] Obama was elected because young people are starting to get interested in their country and I think that's a very healthy thing.