Clint Eastwood Quotes
Actor
Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.
I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it.
What you put into life is what you get out of it.
The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.
Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.
If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.
I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.
They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.
If you think it's going to rain, it will.
I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.
Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party. Kind of a grin with a body behind it.
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.
Crimes against children are the most heinous crime. That, for me, would be a reason for capital punishment because children are innocent and need the guidance of an adult society.
I tried being reasonable, I didn't like it.
We boil at different degrees.
I mean, I've always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else's hair.
You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don't want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you're not performing at your best.
The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.
President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.
Men must know their limitations.
God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don't have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I'm sure he didn't call everybody jerks.
I keep working because I learn something new all the time.
I played characters with villainous aspect. But out-and-out villain? No.
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 still work out on a daily basis.
Comedy isn't necessarily all dialogue. Think of Buster Keaton: the poker face and all this chaos going on all around him. Sometimes it's a question of timing, of the proper rhythm.
'Mystic River' just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.
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.
There's a rebel lying deep in my soul.
Liberals are not always so liberal with people who disapprove - disapprove of their point of view.
When I was growing up, I wasn't an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.
In 'Gran Torino,' I play a guy who's racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you're never too old to learn and embrace people that you don't understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess.
I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we - we own this country. We - we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.
I'm not really conservative. I'm conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don't any more.
Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.
We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.
Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you're the mayor. The bad news is, now you're the mayor.
My old drama coach used to say, 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.
The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.
I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.
I've never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves - it's just a question of finding the subject.
I don't think I've met anyone with a stronger work ethic than Ray Charles.
I've had moments when I've thought about somebody, picked up the phone to call them and they are on the line already, and I think that maybe there's some vibration, some connection.
My uncle played rugby, and my dad played football, and they used to argue which game was the roughest - and everybody agreed rugby was. It's a great team sport, and to be successful, every person has to play in the same level.
A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn't mean they're going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.
Drama usually has some sort of intense conflict.
When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.
Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, 'Clint, you must remember, it's only a movie.'
It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people's lives.
Whether you like it or not, you're forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don't fear death, I'm a fatalist. I believe when it's your time, that's it. It's the hand you're dealt.
I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that's OK, too. It's whatever suits you.
When I was born, the economy wasn't in a great state; it was the Depression, and my father had to be quick to try and find work.
I'm not a New Age person, but I do believe in meditation, and for that reason I've always liked the Buddhist religion. When I've been to Japan, I've been to Buddhist temples and meditated, and I found that rewarding.
You know when you're young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they're trying to be old men and they have no idea what that's like? It's just that stupid the other way around.
I guess any movie actor can become a role model for audiences out there who enjoy him.
'Unforgiven' is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, 'This is great, but I'd like to do this when I'm older.' So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.
You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know.
Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don't know what that is; I don't think too much about that.
My grandfather lived to be late 90s on one side and on the other side, 70s or something. And my father died young, at 63. But he didn't take very good care of himself.
The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your life, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there's nothing really to talk about.
Overnight stardom can be harmful to your mental health. Yeah. It has ruined a lot of people.
In school, I could hear the leaves rustle and go on a journey.
As long as somebody finances you, can make a film and get it seen any place and in any language; then, hopefully, it's a success.
They've got this crazy actor who's 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they're probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.
Nowadays, politically, everybody is promising everything. That's the only way you can get elected.
Society is at odds with itself.
Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.
I don't mind telling a dark side.
There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down. When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I'll just put the stool out there and I'll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn't keep all of the promises he made to everybody.
I'm just a kid - I've got a lot of stuff to do yet.
You have to feel confident. If you don't, then you're going to be hesitant and defensive, and there'll be a lot of things working against you.
Let's put it this way: there wouldn't be much point in me attending a high-school reunion now because there wouldn't be anybody there. We'd struggle to raise a quorum.
On 'Mystic River,' I had to cut my salary and everyone else's to get it made.
I just don't like killing creatures.
I became a Republican in 1951, the first year I could vote.
I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.
Plagiarism is always the biggest thing in Hollywood.
There are certain age limits on police officers. They'd have retired me out at 65.
Prime time for men is, say, 35 to 45. Then they level off and fall off.
When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like 'Bird,' I use 90% black people.
I played a little basketball. Some football in junior high.
People love westerns worldwide. There's something fantasy-like about an individual fighting the elements. Or even bad guys and the elements. It's a simpler time. There's no organized laws and stuff.
There's no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don't try to adapt it, make it commercial.
The craving for information is so huge now, and it can be marketed at such a rapid rate.
I'm a mentor to anybody who's interested.
Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.
You should never give up your inner self.
In my career as a director, there's always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: 'What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?' At that time you have to say: 'OK, forget that and just go ahead.'
I'm not really a Hollywood person. Not that I don't like L.A., but I'm just a Northern California guy.
Fate pulls you in different directions.
My whole life has been one big improvisation.
I always liked characters that were more grounded in reality.
I'd always tried to resist playing the supervirility thing. I liked showing the vulnerability of age.
A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.
When I was a kid, I thought movies just came from air. I thought they just appeared.
Governor Romney has a great business background. He is extremely well educated. He has several degrees from Harvard, including, you know, business and including a law degree.
I've always been fascinated with the stealing of innocence. It's the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one.
There are two kinds of people in this world. 'I' people and 'we' people. I've always tried to be a 'we' person.
When you're young, you're very reckless. Then you get conservative. Then you get reckless again.
I'm not a reality-TV kind of guy. But it's almost like we're living in a reality show. Every day in this country, everybody keeps worrying about the deterioration of America, and it's like a big reality show.