As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

Yes, I’m always – I’m always surprised when you make a film and you live with it a while and you put it out, you never dream that anybody is ever going to want to really see it.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I’m the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it’s still about the work.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

There are two bowlers who I think are very tough to play against – Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel.

Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody’s afraid of French fries.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Women. They are a complete mystery.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

I don’t watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched ‚The King’s Speech‘ on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

‚I am‘ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that ‚I do‘ is the longest sentence?

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

Mine is better than ours.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this ‚hopey changey stuff,‘ she was right: there was nothing there.

In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.

You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.

I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

I’ve done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they’re going to be compared directly against other ads.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

Everything I learned I learned from the movies.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

I’ve never been that much of a money guy. I’m more of a film guy, and most of the money I’ve made is in defense of trying to keep creative control of my movies.

For as one star another far exceeds, So souls in heaven are placed by their deeds.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

As abhorrent as some of this content can be, I do think that it gets down to this principle of giving people a voice.

Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.

Trying to be fascinating is an asinine position to be in.

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

If you judge, investigate.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.