Robert Downey, Jr. Quotes

I'm not used to feeling like I belong where I am.

Nothing will serve you better than a strong work ethic. Nothing. And it's something that you can't teach. You have to be thrown into it, where you're going to sink or swim. It's amazing how self-correcting and how clarifying a good, hard, shitty job can be. Because at the end of the day, any profession I've seen anybody in, when you peer behind the curtains of Oh, wouldn't that be a great job? Wow, what an amazing thing, a philanthropic endeavor! it really just comes down to It's a f**king grind.

I think that we all do heroic things, but hero is not a noun, it's a verb.

Job one is get out of that cave. A lot of people do get out but don't change.

You have to let go of the things that are darling to you. You have to take the focus off yourself and put it on the shape of the scene and the intention of what everyone else needs.

I think you end up doing the stuff you were supposed to do at the time you were supposed to do it.

I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you've done.

Sometimes you're not supposed to enjoy it [acting]. You're supposed to cooperate with misery and proceed anyway. But what I do enjoy is a sense of well-being and just participating in life and life's turns.

I guess the main thing is, you unconsciously take things for granted, and you think the audience is with you, because you're with yourself.

To me, friendship means loving tolerance.

There's somewhere you're supposed to go, and if you get quiet enough, you'll make it.

People never change because they are under threat or under duress. Never. They change because they see something that makes their life seem valuable enough to start moving toward a life worth living.

I'm coming from a place of total strength and humility now.

I don't want to be so confident in myself.

You have to give people something to actually write music so that you're not just running your mouth all the time.

I'm a soldier who didn't know how nasty the battle was going to be, and now, I've got a purple heart and I'm back.

It's become this really odd thing where even some of the folks who build the things that we wear for entertainment are contacted by DARPA-esque companies who are saying, "Yeah, we're really doing that, and we want to talk to you."

Nobody learns a German aria overnight, except Jared Harris.

Do I want to be a hero to my son? No. I would like to be a very real human being. That's hard enough.

I like to be a little more difficult to nail down that that just inside myself, but when someone's motivations, even if they wind up falling in one side or the other of the debate, when they're personal and also when they're masked by something that only the audience knows is really their motivation, that to me is just what I call entertainment.

I think the goal is to make a well written scene seem like it's improvised and/or to come up with things that you find in the room that you couldn't have known until you get into the real situation, just try to improve things as you go along.

A lot of my peer group think I'm an eccentric bisexual, like I may even have an ammonia-filled tentacle somewhere on my body. That's okay.

I think I've been lucky, being my frequent appearances on Court TV have brought to me another level than just the actor guy.

I was kind of like chasing my tail and trying to do the right thing, and was a little bit stupid. Or irresponsible, which is the same thing I guess. It's just been really busy and I had a lot of great opportunities.

I'm not 40 yet. I wouldn't even bother comparing myself to Chaplin.

I did Air America for two reasons: to be in a movie with Mel Gibson and to make a bunch of money. And then underneath there was the hope that in doing this formulaic thing I would be launched into a whole new realm of opportunity to do A-list movies. By the time we were done, the only positive thing was meeting Mel Gibson.

I don't need an Iron Man suit. I'm already a weapon of mass seduction.

I'm not a method guy. I can't be bothered to have a method. I just want to be a part of a good movie and I can't stand to be surrounded by morons.

Everyone has a story, and the story changes, and the more I can root into the truth of things - it's so hard - I don't think anyone ever really puts it all together. But somewhere along the way it all became fused.

With a terrible script you hustle and try to make it better. But with a good script it can be trouble because you rest on your laurels, so to speak, you think it's going to translate easily.

I just don't like big guys who speak cryptically and act like they understand the language better than me.

Acting is always a challenge.

I think a hero is someone who, if abroad or traveling, they go to the GOOP website to see what shops to go to, what restaurants to eat at, what clothes to buy, and they do that not fearlessly but in spite of their fear.

It was a democracy in the truest and most frustrating and most rewarding sense of the word. Anybody could come in and say, "You know, I'm just not cool with that." We'd be like, "Who's that?" "Oh, I was just cleaning the trailers." It was nuts.

Violent ground-acquisition games such as football are in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.

Whenever I watch someone doing something, even if it doesn't turn out so great, I at least admire their intentions and stuff.

I've always just shown up and tried to figure out what's for lunch and am I going to get to play some racquetball that night.

But I will agree that I think that things happen with people in relationships, that you might have been able to enjoy Morocco, say, if you weren't getting out of a bad marriage. You know what I mean?

If I was a lawyer, I'd be my own best client.

The greatest thing my dad taught me came from when I called him from a phone booth and said, 'Hungry. No bus token. Please. Out of options.' He said, 'Pfft, get a job.

You know, when you're part of a comedic duo, you can take breaks. It's kind of like having a partner that is good with a kid.

I guess the issue for me is to keep things dynamic.

I thought that the grounded-ish nature of the first Iron Man and where I think the success of it was based was I think people got excited that this was a technologically possible occurrence; and didn't Obama order an Iron Man?

Mediocrity is my biggest fear. I'm not afraid of total failure because I don't think that will happen. I'm not afraid of success because that beats the hell out of failure. It's being in the middle that scares me.

I'm not used to studios being ecstatic about we did and saying, "Please go do that again."

The higher the stakes, the happier I am, the better I will be.

If I was a Pokemon, I'll either be a Psyduck or a Jigglypuff.

Tofu is the root of all evil, and there's only one thing that can change a man's mind, and that's a modified Uzi with an extra-long clip.