Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin) (1889 – 1977)
Comedic actor and director, usually known by his stage name of Charlie Chaplin.
I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.
The inmates have taken over the asylum!
Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them.
Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities — a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one.
This is a story of a period between two World Wars — an interim in which insanity cut loose. Liberty took a nose dive, and humanity was kicked around somewhat.
Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. ... The trouble is you won't fight. You've given up. But there's something just as inevitable as death. And that's life. Think of the power of the universe — turning the Earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you — if you'll only have the courage and the will to use it.
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
I hope we shall abolish war and settle all differences at the conference table... I hope we shall abolish all hydrogen and atom bombs before they abolish us first.
All I need to make a comedy is a park,a policeman and a pretty girl.
Wars, conflict, it's all business. "One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero". Numbers sanctify.
I am at peace with God; my conflict is with man.
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
[Hynkel addressing the crowds, referring to his colleagues: clearly modelled upon Göring and Goebbels]
Hynkel: Herring shouldn smelten fine from Garbitsch, und Garbitsch shouldn smelten fine from Herring. Herring und Garbitsch... [He clasps his hands together]
Translator: His excellency has just referred to the struggles of his early days shared by his two loyal comrades.
I am for people. I can't help it.
Schultz: You must speak.
Jewish barber: I can't.
Schultz: It's our only hope.
I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of an ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, of all of which I am the sum total.
As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY".
"By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none."
Look up to the sky
You'll never find rainbows
If you’re looking down.
I am not a political man and I have no political convictions. I am an individual and a believer in liberty. That is all the politics I have. On the other hand I am not a super-patriot. Super-patriotism leads to Hitlerism — and we've had our lesson there. I don't want to create a revolution — I just want to create a few more films.