David Mamet Quotes (23 Quotes)

Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong that the bumblebee can fly that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.

I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.

We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a Protective Monastery of Aesthetic Truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.

The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.

The proclamation and repetition of first principles is a constant feature of life in our democracy. Active adherence to these principles, however, has always been considered un-American. We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when fa

I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.

Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.

People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.

The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle.

A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.

The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them (much, perhaps, as in bygone days, an election celebrated the same).

The popularity of disaster movies expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.

Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder censorship, we call it concern for commercial viability.

It's only words... unless they're true.

We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.

Oh, you know what I got a better idea.

The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates.

Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.

I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.

In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.