Kirk Douglas Quotes

“Acting is a youthful profession.”

“Acting is make-believe. I never believe I'm the character; I want you to believe.”

“All children are natural actors, and I'm still a kid. If you grow up completely, you can never be an actor.”

“At 98 years old, I have learned one lesson from history: It very often repeats itself.”

“Being seventy has its advantages. I was outspoken before, but now what have I got to keep quiet about?”

“Compared to Thoreau, Saint Francis of Assisi was peanuts.”

“Don't crucify me because of what your idea of a movie star is. I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor.”

“Fear is a terrible thing. It makes you do awful things.”

“I don't need a critic to tell me I'm an actor. I make my own way. Nobody's my boss. Nobody's ever been my boss.”

“I don’t know who any of the new stars are, and they probably don’t know me.”

“I guess I was a bad boy... Yes, yes, I've had lots of women in my life.”

“I have a great respect for actors like Clint Eastwood, who's a wonderful director. I think two pictures that I directed were not successful, so I decided not to make any more.”

“I have always been grateful that my Russian mother and father came to this country to give me a better chance, and I have had a better chance.”

“I have been trying to create a campaign to have our country make an apology for slavery, for the way that blacks were treated before the Civil War and after the Civil War.”

“I have one computer that my wife gave me. All I know how to do, and I do it every day, is play Spider Solitaire. And I don't have a cell phone.”

“I love champions. A champion has something special about him.”

“I think half the success in life comes from first trying to find out what you really want to do. And then going ahead and doing it.”

“I think religion has caused so much catastrophe in the world.”

“I was going to play in First Blood, but I suggested to changing it and I dropped out. I said to Sylvester Stallone, "You know, I almost stopped you from making millions of dollars," because in my suggestion, I killed his character at the end of the picture.”

“I was not a tough guy. I just acted like one.”

“I'm glad they gave women the right to vote, but sometimes I'm sorry they have the right to smoke.”

“I’m too old to change. Like Popeye, ‘I yam what I yam.’ Love me or hate me, just don’t be indifferent.”

“I’ve lived through the horrors of a Great Depression and two World Wars, the second of which was started by a man who promised that he would restore his country it to its former greatness. I was 16 when that man came to power in 1933. For almost a decade before his rise he was laughed at – not taken seriously. He was seen as a buffoon who couldn’t possibly deceive an educated, civilized population with his nationalistic, hateful rhetoric. The ‘experts’ dismissed him as a joke. They were wrong.”

“I’ve made a career of playing sons of bitches.”

“I’ve never tried to win popularity contests. I’ve always been blunt – never hesitated about expressing myself.”

“If you want to know about a man you can find out an awful lot by looking at who he married.”

“In order to achieve anything you must be brave enough to fail.”

“Know what a loner is? He's a born cripple. He's a cripple because the only person he can live with is himself. It's his life, the way he wants to live. It's all for him.”

“Life is like a B-picture script! It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I'd turn it down.”

“Love has more depth as you get older.”