I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

I’m not a good storm-outer… because I forget stuff.

We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.

We live in ugly times.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

We’re not going to go 82-0 and blow everybody out. We are going to be challenged.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

There’s a lot of great movies that have won the Academy Award, and a lot of great movies that haven’t. You just do the best you can.

I do understand it’s not easy to run an I-league club. I have been part of many and I know the scene.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

In England, when an athlete gets to the top, we do our best to destroy him.

If I want to be called ‚The Rock,‘ I’ll be called ‚The Rock.‘ If I want to go back to wrestling, I’ll go back to wrestling.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.

There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.

I grew up as this very carefree, happy kid then things turned darker for me. Maybe it was because I saw that the world wasn’t as happy a place as I had hoped it would be for me.

We were on for six years. We were in syndication for a while. It had its run. I still see the people from ‚Mr. Belvedere,‘ too. We stay in touch.

In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

Many entrepreneurs do not realize that many of the problems their businesses face today began yesterday, long before there was a business.

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

None of the films I’ve done was designed for a mass audience, except for ‚Indiana Jones.‘ Nobody in their right mind thought ‚American Graffiti‘ or ‚Star Wars‘ would work.

I’d have to be superman to do some of the things I’m supposed to have done, I’ve been at six different places at six different times.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

My wish is to bring my heroes to the big screen, and many of them have already appeared in my films.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It’s really only to be heard when everyone’s out enjoying it.

I know what it feels like to struggle to get the education that you need.

‚Leading man‘ just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

Test a servant while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and a wife in misfortune.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!

I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

The future of American film lies on television.

I was sure I’d set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth – that I hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if ‚The Big Trail‘ had been a success and launched me as a star.

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

I’ve always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, ‚Hi,‘ that the people ought to get their money’s worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.