Warren Beatty Quotes

I've never been one to shortchange the importance of actors.

I always feel that I'm sort of co-directing with my fellow actors. And you can tell when something's going on that really interests them and they approve of. And then you can sort of tell when there's not.

I didn't have a rigidly enforced religious parental pressure, but I did have a few years in my mid-teens of turning to religion, and it was very meaningful to me.

Lenin said that people vote with their feet. Well, that's what's happening. They either go, or they don't go. It's all politics. It's all demographics.

How can anybody hate nurses? Nobody hates nurses. The only time you hate a nurse is when they're giving you an enema.

Even the promiscuous feel pain.

It makes you feel good when a movie works. Usually when I see an old movie I've made, I say to myself, 'Oh God, why did I do this?' and 'Why didn't I change that?' and things like that.

I mourn the loss of the gigantic screen, but I guess you can't have everything.

I don't think you should talk while the movie was going on and say, 'Oh, look at that - look how smart I was' or 'What a brilliant shot that is!' I don't believe in that.

I don't want to run for governor, but I don't think anyone should put public service out of the question because that's not what a good citizen does.

Government is not show business.

Those people upstairs think that Karl Marx was somebody who wrote a good anti-trust law.

I was friends with President Ronald Reagan and he once said to me, 'I don't know how anybody can serve in public office without being an actor.

There's no point in making a movie just to be making a movie.

And the success of the union movement, historically, has always been to benefit all working men and women - not just people who belong to the union.

Although Ronald Reagan was somebody I disagreed with on most ideological things, he was a friend of mine, and he was a very, very likable man. Ronald Reagan, for instance, was maybe more able to get the very rich to do the right thing sometimes.

In a way, I'd rather ride down the street on a camel than give what is sometimes called an in-depth interview. I'd rather ride down the street on a camel nude. In a snowstorm. Backwards.

That's all gone, now, the old, Hollywood.

I believe that DVD is that which gives some hope to retaining some content in movies that will appeal to an older audience or the more sophisticated audience or the audience that doesn't need or desire to see a movie on a Friday night.

There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.

Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.

Organized labor, if they're doing a responsible job, is going to organize the pooling of small amounts of money to protect the interests of the people who are not rich.

The Golden Globes are fun. The Oscars are Business.

Being here allows me to make the case that not all aging, narcissistic movie actors whose children could be mistaken for their grandchildren necessarily act with the same motivation.

But the Republican right-wing agenda, these people - Arnold and his patrons - felt it could be accomplished by circumventing the Legislature and spending money and organizing and giving sound bites.

To denigrate the union movement in this way is to denigrate the right and the ability of people who are not rich to organize and to accomplish things together.

Arnold has had his spokesman call me a crackpot. That was a mistake.

I'm not going to call a dog "Dog." I suppose if she were a baby you'd cal her "Person."

My notion of a wife at 40 is that a man should be able to change her, like a bank note, for two 20s.

Movies are fun, but they're not a cure for cancer.

Always thank your nurse. Sometimes they're the only one between you and a hearse.

I have a day job. I can make movies when I want to.

By that time this society is going to be completely different for one thing. Your own son or your own son's son is not going to have the needs for money that you feel you have now. The society itself will be less dependent on money and currency to get along.

Women are a problem, but if you haven't already guessed, they are the kind of problem I enjoy wrestling with.

It's very clear you have to engage the public and say: You have to vote no on 74, no on 75, no on 76, no on 77. Those are the issues that Arnold pushing. And those are reactionary, Republican initiatives.

My mother and my father were teachers. My grandmother and my grandfather were teachers. This is something I really know about. Even when I was a kid, it was a profession my father couldn't stay in, because he couldn't make enough money.

When you mutilate movies for mass media, you tamper with the hearts and minds of America.

I'm old, I'm young, I'm intelligent, I'm stupid. My tide goes in and out.

To say that people would cease to come to California if they would have to pay more taxes is to underestimate the advantages of being in California - mightily.

Charity is taking an ugly girl to lunch.

I don't think there's anything to be admired in lying, cheating or philandering. But there might be something to be admired in not burning people at the stake because they have those weaknesses.

You'd rather have nothing than settle for less.

I believe if a private citizen is able to affect public opinion in a constructive way, he doesn't have to be an elected public servant to perform a public service.

The highest level of sexual excitement is in a monogamous relationship.

You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.

Basically the tax reform ideas are to clean up the tax system and to eliminate the loopholes that only very few make use of, to eliminate the possibility of people making millions of dollars every year and not paying any tax at all through oil depletion allowances and things like that.

And then the conditions of safety - or lack of safety - for teachers in public schools, and the disparity between public schools and private schools is shameful.

I grew up in this Southern Baptist atmosphere, and my mother and father were both, I guess you would say, academics. They were both teachers.