Charlton Heston Thinking Quotations

I think narcotics and alcohol, and even tobacco are enormously costly ingredients in our society.

In the mainstream film market, certainly in television, sex is handled fairly discreetly. I think the abuse of extraordinarily graphic violence and language presses much closer to the tolerance of public taste.

I don't think rock music has any positive function.

We don't think well of our presidents when they are serving. Even Kennedy, with such a short presidency, was beginning to lose his remarkable appeal to the American people when he was suddenly sainted by death.

You have to be very careful to view yourself with a somewhat skeptical eye and to remember that you're not here taking down everything I'm saying because you think I'm such a marvelous fellow but because your editors say go get 1,200 words or whatever on Chuck Heston.

You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.

I used to think if it wasn't possible to be a family man and a totally dedicated artist, I'd rather be the former. I'm an idealist and a romantic.

You could think of extraordinary examples to the contrary: The Grapes of Wrath... and even into the 70s.

In what I think is the most serious problem the world faces, which is the population explosion, we will come I think to a time when measures that are not even dreamt of now will become necessary.

Maybe it's good if God gives you something to think about every so often.

I am very proud of the fact that I led the arts contingent on the civil rights march in the summer of '63. In many ways, I think it was the high-water mark of the civil rights movement.

Political Correctness, what does it mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on American campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to suppression? Let's be honest. Who thinks professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.

I think there are probably more closet conservatives in Hollywood than there are closet homosexuals.

Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind.