Stanley Kubrick Quotes (22 Quotes)

There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die.

When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists-neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.

It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else.

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.

It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.

The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale

Here's to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it's caused me.

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

Any time you take a chance you better be sure the rewards are worth the risk because they can put you away just as fast for a ten dollar heist as they can for a million dollar job.

You're an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

What do you take me for? A fourteen karat sucker?

I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.

I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.