Oliver Stone Quotes

If we [Americans] are a strong people, a united people, why do we always have to hear how great we are? What is this self-love? Where does this come from? It got worse, because after the war we thought we'd won it. That's the first myth. Frankly, Russia won it. The Soviet Union sacrificed far greater form than anyone else to win that war. Secondly, we had the atomic bomb. We should not have dropped it on Japan. We did as an example to the Soviets, not to defeat Japan and to save American lives. These are myths that we explode with a lot of research early on.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

I can't tell you how many times at the breakfast table my dad would curse out Franklin Roosevelt. I love my father. He was an intelligent man, but he really didn't like regulations of the Roosevelt style, or the taxes. He was an Dwight Eisenhower man. And that's what Eisenhower did, committed to breaking down the program.

We are seeing entertainment become politics and we're seeing people acting out in ways that are extremely violent and destabilizing. No rules apply. We're in an era of no rules now, it seems.

I'm terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily.

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

[Fidel Castro] has a very good [human rights] record.

When I go to the movies, and I have to sit through ten previews of films that look [alike] and tell the whole story, you know that we've reached an age of consensus. And consensus is the worst thing for us. We all agree to agree. That's where we lose it as a culture. We have to move away from that.

Nixon identified himself as a crisis-laden man. He'd reach levels of victory and then he'd plunge into defeat. He was vice president, then he lost to Kennedy, then he lost the California governorship. Then came a great comeback and then he blew it again - and the next comeback, after he lost the presidency. He was a man who needed the feeling of walking the precipice.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works.

There is this thing about time that you can't see at the time you're at.

Television has usurped everybody from film. And so have commercials, by the way.

I don't want to make a half-assed film. It's not my area of expertise.

Football is mesmerizing, because it's a figurative war. You go in one direction till you get there, but you get there as a team, not as an individual. Players bond whether they're black or white, much as soldiers do.

This myth that America has this atomic bomb that makes us right, it makes us good, it makes us set the agenda for the world. Everywhere, we can go global, we determine.

Cynicism was a school in Greece - the Cynics. Diogenes is a famous Cynic. There was a strong belief in nihilism and narcissism. Those are old schools too.

We have enormous challenges in front of us.

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.

I'm interested, I suppose, in tortured power.

Independence is a state of mind. Independence is spirit without category.

Now with digital, we have much better projection, and if the theaters are charging higher prices but providing refreshments and a clean, well-lit theater, there's no reason why this cannot go on as a senior-citizen-driven business for years. Especially with movies for adults.

When I was a child, I'd see a movie, I took it for what it was, I enjoyed it. And if I believed it I would tend to be more interested in knowing more about it.

Every day that you get up, it's some kind of victory if you're making a good product, or working on a project that can only help mankind.

Pat Nixon was called the Mona Lisa of American politics. She never wrote anything. Her interviews tell us nothing.

I've met people who will go to a movie that I can't stand and they say that they saw that movie ten times. There's something they like and identified in that movie, and I don't see it.

When I'm working with another writer, I tend to make a lot of effort. When I collaborate with a writer, I'm not interested in credit, but I'm feeding him stuff all the time that I feel is important to shaping the script.

Conspiracy nut, leftist, madman. These are terms of dismissal so you don't have to listen to the argument. It would be healthier and more fun to hear what someone has to say.

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.

I gave up on America. I read the Times just to find out what they're thinking. I read blogs. I get most of my best information from people who are there, people who write independently. And there's actually very few of them.

Get the overall. Some of my films may have been crude at times, or tough, or missed the points, but I've tried to get the overall in. I think that's more important. You may miss a thing or two, but you move faster. If you can do it in three takes, do it in three takes.

I'd like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you'd sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling.

I'd like to be honest to my time, and I lived from 1946, and I want to understand why our country, which I love so much, and was a great country when I was young, it seemed, became this monster vampire on the face of humanity- a vampire squid, to quote Matt Taibbi, sucking out the juices of all mankind. Why? It's a basic question.

There is a narrative to every life, and I believe in the classic mode of storytelling that goes back to Homer and carries through to today.

We could learn a lot from the ancients, and we should go back there.

Obama took a bad situation and, in certain ways, made it worse. ... I find Obama scary in a way that I had not done in 2008.

With television, the image has been degenerated, no question. With the internet, commercials... people are much too cynical about image. It's stale. And all over the world, not just America.

I'm a dramatist. Dramatists have a right to look at history and interpret it the way they see it.

I think everyone has the same question on their mind: Is the glass half-full or half-empty?

I want my children to have access to something that looks beyond what I call the tyranny of now. You read the paper, everyone talks about that thing [in the news] that day, and all the subconscious really important stuff that's going on is being neglected. The beauty of history is that historians have the ability to find patterns, the big picture. When you make a movie, you try to find that. I'm doing in the cinema what historians try to do in their own media.

I am a storyteller, and I do love ideas.

Bernie Sanders is a disappointment on foreign policy, totally doesn't think about it. But he has the possibility to be more isolationist, which would be good for us actually. We manage to kill several million people on this planet without taking any credit for it or blame. It's a heavy karma we have.

When I make a new movie, I always get stuck with, "That's not an Oliver Stone film." But I don't know what to do about that except just move on.

I guess you could say Alexander the Great was a man who completely transported me and moved me and inspired me because of his idealism, and I'd go back to the Greeks, and I always liked Homer and all the philosophers and their way of thinking and their concept of honor. I think their concept of honor does apply to the modern age, and certain people that walk around are pre-Christian.

My ego is nothing - look what Alexander the Great achieved. And I felt he was a figure outside time, a figure we don't even understand, because he's frankly pre-Christian, and his concepts of honor go back to Homer.

Hell is the impossibility of reason.

Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valour pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, the HELL with you!

I went to Vietnam, and I was there for a long time. [Using marijuana] made the difference between staying human or, as Michael Douglas said, becoming a beast.

I'm more comfortable with simplicity as I get older.