Charlie Chaplin Quotes

Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

We think too much and feel too little.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

A man’s true character comes out when he’s drunk.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‚elephant‘.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

In the end, everything is a gag.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

I am for people. I can’t help it.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

I’d sooner be called a successful crook than a destitute monarch.

I don’t believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.

Why should poetry have to make sense?