The people are applauding you because none of them understands you and applauding me because everybody understands me.
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone.
More than machinery, we need humanity.
Quebec from the boat looked like the ramparts where Hamlet’s ghost might have walked.
Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator, I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.
Dictators free themselves by enslaving others. They work not for your benefit, but their own.
The ability to think, like the violin or piano, requires daily practice.
I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood.
I hate the sight of blood, but it’s in my veins.
I can’t understand Karl Marx, so how can I be a Communist?
Anyone can make them cry, but it takes a genius to make them laugh.
Tomorrow, the birds will sing. Be brave. Face life.
Where words leave off, gesture begins. Don’t we speak of a person being speechless with rage, dancing with impatience, setting his teeth? The final motions of the soul are speechless, animal, grotesque, or of an incomparable beauty.
My technique is the outcome of thinking for myself, of my own logic and approach; it is not borrowed from what others are doing.
We must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature, or go insane.
The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.
Unless I write every day, I don’t feel I deserve my dinner.
As long as men die, liberty will never perish.
You have to believe in yourself. That’s the secret.
I’ve arrived at the age where a platonic friendship can be sustained on the highest moral plane.