Kirk Douglas Quotations

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

Why can't a woman be more like a dog, huh? So sweet, loving, attentive.

He was a very, very great talent and we have lost someone important.

I thought he was brilliant. Whenever I see that picture, I don't see my son. I see that pathetic character.

Because I love you, I will be checking up on you, ... You have honored me and I thank all of you.

A Father. A Son. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

If you want to see a star, don't go to Hollywood. Come to Palm Springs.

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 was going to play in First Blood, but I suggested to changing it and I dropped out. I said to [Silvester] 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 directed two films, not very successfully, and after that, I went back to being an actor and a producer.

When you get old the worst thing is you lose so many friends. Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne. People who I loved to work with.

When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.

I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.

Michael [Douglas] was just leaving the TV series The Streets of San Francisco and he said, 'Dad, let me try it.' I thought, 'Well, if I couldn't make it...' So, I gave it to him and he got the money, the director and the cast. The biggest disappointment for me, I always wanted to play McMurphy. They got a young actor, Jack Nicholson. I thought, 'Oh God. He will be terrible.' Then I saw the picture and, of course, he was great in it! That was my biggest disappointment that turned out to be one of the things I'm most proud of because my son Michael did it. I couldn't do it, but Michael did it.

I've played some good guys as well, in Spartacus, Paths of Glory and my favorite picture, Lonely Are the Brave, so I had a mixture of parts in my life.

Really a bad guy is more interesting, dramatically, than the good guy.

I'm concerned that the world is a mess. That's why when I wrote my last book, Let's Face It, I dedicated it to the younger generation because, let's face it, the world is in a mess. Right now, the young people will inherit that mess. I think we have to do everything we can.

I think the election of [Barack] Obama was a great step to prove to the world that we believe that all men were created equal. I think it will show that we have humility.

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 think that [Barack] Obama was elected because young people are starting to get interested in their country and I think that's a very healthy thing.

If I can get enough signatures, to present an apology to slavery, I will present it to the President. The House of Representatives has already passed the resolution for the apology, but it has to pass the Senate. I think, in spite of all our problems, I think we're in the right direction.

I went to Hollywood to test for Martha Ivers and I thought I was going to play the part that Van Heflin played.But they wanted me to play the part of Barbara Stanwyck's husband, so I played that. Then when I finished the movie, I went back to Broadway and did another flop.

The first time I had got an offer to come to Hollywood, I turned it down. I said, 'No, I'm an actor of the stage.'

I never wanted to be in movies. In a sense, I'm still a failure because I wanted to be a star on the stage.

When you get to my age, you find that most of your dear friends are gone.

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.

With John Wayne, we argued all the time and we made four pictures.

You know, you have to have some inner philosophy to deal with adversity.

Life is like a B-picture script.

Streets crowded with people strolling, or sitting at outdoor cafes. And always, talking, gesturing, singing, laughing. I liked Rome immediately.Everybody was a performer.

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

I was living in a terrible time when people were being accused of being communists, and they attacked the movie industry, especially the writers. People couldn't work if they were on the blacklist. The studios banned them. It was the most onerous period in movie history. I don't think we have ever had a period so dark as that.

The best wine comes from home, wherever it is.

You have not learned to live until you have learned to give

A stroke is a very difficult thing. You get depressed. . . . What I found was this: the cure for depression is to think of others, to do for others. You can always find something to be grateful for.

Now, what does an actor who can't talk do? Wait for silent pictures to come back?

If I have to speak in public, I am terrified.

I never had any desire to be a film actor. I never thought I was the good-looking movie type, which I assumed they wanted.

I know Italians and I like them. A lot of my father's best friends were Italians.

Fame is as much about luck as it is about talent, perhaps more.

Acting is a youthful profession.

Listen - pacemaker, crash, stroke. What does it mean? God doesn't want me now. That's all.

Since my stroke, I have begun to see so many miracles all around me. I look out of the window in my room: verdant grass, silver-tipped oak leaves, tall palm trees gentle swaying as they reach to the sky, masses and masses of roses. All colors, so many shapes, exquisite fragrances.

I remember little things that break my heart. We were coming out of Michael's house one day, and he noticed my shoelaces were undone. He bent down and tied them. I almost cried. To me, it was such a gesture of love.

"Hail to the Chief" was played, and the President got up and made a gracious opening remark. "I've been in this office for six years, and yet every time I hear that music, I turn around wondering who they're playing it for."

Obey the voice within - it commands us to give of ourselves and help others. As long as we have the capacity to give, we are alive

When you reach 95, after you get over your surprise, you start looking back.

What would my parents think about America if they arrived here today? Would they even want to come? I wonder.

The first thing I look for in a woman is warmth-femininity. It's got nothing to do with a pretty face.

I'm glad they gave women the right to vote, but sometimes I'm sorry they have the right to smoke. Most women are messy about it, particularly about their lipstick. I don't mind wiping lipstick off myself, but I hate seeing it on cigarettes, napkins and coffee cups! I don't like women with all their beauty machinery showing-curlers, cold cream, mascara brushes. I'd even prefer to not see a woman touch up her lipstick, but I guess that's expecting too much.

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

You haven't learned how to live until you've learned how to give.

My mother, we were a very poor family. When I was a kid, we would be in our little room, and there would be a knock on the door almost every night with a hobo begging for food. Even though we didn't even have enough to eat, my mother always found something to give them.

Love has more depth as you get older.

My children didn't have my advantages; I was born into abject poverty.

Now, why is it that most of us can talk openly about the illnesses of our bodies, but when it comes to our brain and illnesses of the mind we clam up and because we clam up, people with emotional disorders feel ashamed, stigmatized, and don't seek the help that can make the difference.

The older you get, the more awards you get. So, if you live long enough, then you get all the awards eventually.

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

Maybe there is no peace in this world. I don't know ... But I know as long as we live we must stay true to ourselves.

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.

Michael [Douglas] is, I think, a great actor. He's made some very interesting pictures. When he was going to college, I was very proud of him, but when he said, 'Dad, I want to be in a play,' he had a bit part. I went to see it and Michael said, 'Dad, how was I?' I said, 'You were terrible.' I thought he would go on to be a lawyer and in three months, he was in another play and I went and, I must admit, he was great. I think he has been good in everything he's done.

I came from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.

The biggest lie is the lie we tell ourselves in the distorted visions we have of ourselves, blocking out some sections, enhancing others. What remains are not the cold facts of life, but how we perceive them. That's really who we are.

I felt [It Runs in the Family] it was a picture that, after I'm gone, my family would like to see it. It was a wonderful mixture of people in my family.

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.

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.

Sometimes, the thing that ties you down sets you free.

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

Virtue is not photogenic.

If I thought a man had never committed a sin in his life, I don't think I'd want to talk with him. A man with flaws is more interesting.

No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. So what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Moses had one, and he did all right.

Unfortunately, once I did learn to smoke, I couldn't stop. I escalated to two packs a day very quickly, and stayed that way for about ten years. When I decided to stop, I adopted the method that my father had used when he quit. He would carry a cigarette in his shirt pocket, and every time he felt like smoking, he would pull out the cigarette and confront it: "Who stronger? You? Me?" Always the answer was the same: "I stronger." Back the cigarette would go, until the next craving. It worked for him, and it worked for me.

The learning process continues until the day you die.

The only advantage I have found in being Jewish is that I can be openly anti-Semitic.

My kids never had the advantages I had. I was born poor.

When you become a star, you don't change - everyone else does.

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

Virtue is not photogenic. What is it to be a nice guy? To be nothing, that's what. A big fat zero with a smile for everybody.

On a crowded bus in Israel, a mother was speaking to her son in Yiddish. An Israeli woman reprimanded her. "You should be speaking Hebrew. Why are you talking to him in Yiddish?" The mother answered, "I don't want he should forget he's a Jew."

When I produced Spartacus, the writer was Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in jail because he would not answer McCarthy's questions about other people. He submitted the picture under the false name of Sam Jackson.

My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free.