Herzog Quotes

Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It's an ego trip, and I'm not on an ego trip. I don't have ambitions - I have a vision. ~ Werner Herzog

It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say. ~ Arthur Herzog

You have to realize that, about 20,000 years ago, there was a cataclysmic event when an entire rock face collapsed and sealed off the cave. It's a completely preserved time capsule. You've got tracks of cave bears that look like they were left yesterday, and you've got the footprint of a boy who was probably eight years old next to the footprint of a wolf. ~ Werner Herzog

We are surrounded by worn-out, banal, useless and exhausted images, limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution. ~ Werner Herzog

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do
out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation
look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing. ~ Werner Herzog

I don't see [the jungle] so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain. ~ Werner Herzog

I'm not buddy-buddy with the players. If they need a buddy, let them buy a dog. ~ Whitey Herzog

The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four year old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream. ~ Werner Herzog

Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes. ~ Werner Herzog

I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently. ~ Werner Herzog

Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault. ~ Werner Herzog

It's all movies for me. And besides, when you say documentaries, in my case, in most of these cases, means "feature film" in disguise. ~ Werner Herzog

Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden, we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are. ~ Werner Herzog

This is the birth of the modern human soul. The artists are like us, not like the Neanderthals, who had no culture - and who incidentally were still roaming the landscape at the time the paintings were made. It is striking that there is a distant cultural echo that seems to reach all the way down to us, over dozens of millennia. ~ Werner Herzog

Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge. ~ Werner Herzog

There's a completely new culture out there. I'm not a participant of texting and driving - or texting at all - but I see there's something going on in civilization which is coming with great vehemence at us. ~ Werner Herzog

These people were smiling because they were where they wanted to be. They understood that life is too short for what-ifs and complications. Life, they found, can be as simple as reading the wind. ~ Brad Herzog

I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews. ~ Werner Herzog

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[ ... ] ~ Werner Herzog

Chauvet Cave is rather like the awakening of the modern human soul or I would say the awakening of modern human culture. Because Neanderthal men who still rode the landscape parallel to the people who did these paintings didn't have culture. There's no evidence of culture, no symbolic depiction, no evidence of music, no evidence of sculptures, no evidence of religious beliefs. ~ Werner Herzog

I like to direct landscapes just as I like to direct actors and animals. ~ Werner Herzog

There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men. ~ Maurice Herzog

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition. ~ Werner Herzog

Facts do not constitute truth, ~ Werner Herzog

We do not see the danger clearly enough that we develop images adequate to our state of civilization. When you watch TV, you know instantly that there's something wrong with the images. When you open a magazine and see the ads, you know there's something wrong with the images. And it's unhealthy and not good and outright dangerous, in my opinion. ~ Werner Herzog

The only thing bad about winning the pennant is that you have to manage the All-Star Game the next year. I'd rather go fishing for three days. ~ Whitey Herzog

Hold firm to your vision but don't be a tyrant on set, ~ Werner Herzog

In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel. ~ Werner Herzog

I'm trying to find these rare moments where you feel completely illuminated. Facts never illuminate you. The phone directory of Manhattan doesn't illuminate you, although it has factually correct entries, millions of them. But these rare moments of illumination that you find when you read a great poem, you instantly know. You instantly feel this spark of illumination. You are almost stepping outside of yourself and you see something sublime. ~ Werner Herzog

It could be that the hope was in the adventure, the honor in the pursuit, the pride in the doing. ~ Brad Herzog

With actors, normally I don't like to have any conversation about background and about motivations and all this. ~ Werner Herzog

I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush. ~ Werner Herzog

On working with director Werner Herzog: I have to shoot without any breaks. I yell at Herzog and hit him. I have to fight for every sequence. I wish Herzog would catch the plague. ~ Klaus Kinski

One time in spring training, we had the hit-and-run on, and Carl Erskine threw me a curve and I struck out into a double play. I came back to the bench and Casey [Stengel] said, 'next time, tra-la-la.' I didn't know what tra-la-la meant, but next time up, I hit a line drive, right into a double play. When I sat down, Casey came over and said, 'Like I told you, tra-la-la.' ~ Whitey Herzog

I have to shoot without any breaks. I yell at Herzog and hit him. I have to fight for every sequence. I wish Herzog would catch the plague, more than ever. ~ Klaus Kinski

Comrades, we are going to try to cheer you up, and our sense of humor will help us in this endeavor, although the phrase gallows humor has never seemed so logical and appropriate. The external circumstances are exactly in our favor. We need only to take a look at the barbed wire fences, so high and full of electricity. Just like your expectations.
And then there are the watchtowers that monitor our every move. The guards have machine guns. But machine guns won't intimidate us, comrades. They just have barrels of guns, whereas we are going to have barrels of laughs.
You may be surprised at how upbeat and cheerful we are. Well, comrades, there are goods reasons for this. It's been a long time since we were in Berlin. But every time we appeared there, we felt very uneasy. We were afraid we'd get sent to the concentration camps. Now that fear is gone. We're already here. ~ Rudolph Herzog

If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe. ~ Werner Herzog

If you don't have outstanding relief pitching, you might as well piss on the fire and call the dogs. ~ Whitey Herzog

You are confronted with abysses of time that are, in a way, unfathomable. You see a painting in charcoal of raindeer and it was left unfinished and somebody else finished it. But through radio carbon dating we know that the next one completed the painting 5,000 years later. You're just blown away by the notion of passage of time. We have no relationship to that kind of depth of time. ~ Werner Herzog

But if two's company, three's a crowd - and that demands the omniscient point of view. ~ Arthur Herzog

Education is not neutral; it is political to the core. ~ William R. Herzog II

I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting. ~ Werner Herzog

What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs. ~ Werner Herzog

Yes, the pyramids have been built, but if you give me 300,000 disciplined men and give me 30 years, I could build a bigger one. ~ Werner Herzog

Understanding POV is essential, or ought to be. ~ Arthur Herzog

A slick way to outfigure a person is to get him figuring you figure he's figuring you're figuring he'll figure you aren't really figuring what you want him to figure you figure. ~ Whitey Herzog

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk. ~ Werner Herzog

In the Chauvet Cave, there is a painting of a bison embracing the lower part of a naked female body. Why does Pablo Picasso, who had no knowledge of the Chauvet Cave, use exactly the same motif in his series of drawings of the Minotaur and the woman? Very, very strange. ~ Werner Herzog

What the new science of anthrozoology reveals is that our attitudes, behaviors, and relationships with the animals in our lives- the ones we love, the ones we hate, and the ones we eat- are, likewise, more complicated than we thought. ~ Hal Herzog

Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue. ~ Werner Herzog

To fake it is to stand guard over emptiness. ~ Arthur Herzog

For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory. ~ Werner Herzog

We need three kinds of pitching: left handed, right handed, and relief. ~ Whitey Herzog

I prefer to be alive, so I'm cautious about taking risks. ~ Werner Herzog

In a way, I managed to get the deepest things, the best things out of people. That's why I'm a filmmaker. If you don't have it in you, you'd better do something else. ~ Werner Herzog

You sweat out the free agent thing in November then you make the trades in December. Then you struggle to sign the guys left in January and in February I get down to sewing all the new numbers on the uniforms. ~ Whitey Herzog

A fairly young, intelligent-looking man with long hair asked me whether filming or being filmed could do harm, whether it could destroy a person. In my heart the answer was yes, but I said no. ~ Werner Herzog

The rules are changed now, there's not any way to build a team today. It's just how much money you want to spend. You could be the world champions and somebody else makes a key acquisition or two and you're through. ~ Whitey Herzog

Our presence on this planet does not seem to be sustainable. Our technological civilisation makes up particularly vulnerable. There is talk all over the scientific community about climate change. Many of them [scientists] agree, the end of human life on earth is assured. ~ Werner Herzog

For me a true landscape is not just a representation of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of mind, literally inner landscapes, and it is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films. ~ Werner Herzog

'Annapurna' is a sort of novel. It's a novel, but a true novel. ~ Maurice Herzog

When I say tourism is sin and traveling on foot is virtue, it's condensed into a dictum. It's much more complex than that, but let's face it, for me, my experience, the world reveals itself to those that travel on foot. You understand the world in a much deeper level. And it does good to anyone who makes film. ~ Werner Herzog

The only consistency in the way humans think about animals is inconsistency. ~ Hal Herzog

Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart. ~ Werner Herzog

I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I'm good at that! ~ Werner Herzog

The parables of Jesus have long been revered as earthly stories with heavenly meanings. They have been viewed in this way because Jesus was thought to be a teacher of spiritual truth and divine wisdom. However, this view of Jesus stands in some tension with the account of his final trial and execution. If Jesus was a teacher of heavenly truths dispensed through literary gems called parables, it is difficult to understand how he could have been executed as a political subversive and crucified between two social bandits. It appears that Jerusalem elites collaborating with their Roman overlords executed Jesus because he was a threat to their economic and political interests. Unless they perceived him to be a threat, they would not have publicly degraded and humiliated him before executing him in as ignominious a way as possible. ~ William R. Herzog II

I know for sure that there is only one step from insecticide to genocide. ~ Werner Herzog

I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth. ~ Werner Herzog

Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating. ~ Werner Herzog

Amos Vogel was a mentor, a guiding light for me. In his presence, you always rose. But his importance to me is of minor significance. What is significant is that with him an entire epoch ends. The Last Lion has left us.
I am still not capable – or rather unwilling – to understand the fact that Amos passed away, because a man like him cannot be dead. His traces are everywhere.

(on the passing of Amos Vogel, his friend for more than 45 years) ~ Werner Herzog

Because he let the entire world press upon him. For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person.Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. ~ Saul Bellow

I'm not an interviewer. I have conversations. ~ Werner Herzog

Some people asked me if I would be interested in managing the A's. I said a definite no thank you. At night, that place is a graveyard with lights. ~ Whitey Herzog

But whatever the POV, and the difficulty of forcing the action into a particular frame, stay within it. ~ Arthur Herzog

Michael Heseltine, a wild-haired visionary, Klaus Kinski to Margaret's Thatcher's Werner Herzog, pushed Docklands across the Thames to the East Greenwich Peninsula. The Millennium Dome concept was a remake of 'Fitzcarraldo', a film in which suborned natives (expendable extras) drag a paddle steamer over a hill in order to force a short cut to more exploitable territory. The point being to bring Enrico Caruso, one of the gods of opera, to an upstream trading post. An insane achievement mirrored in the rebranding of the Dome, after its long and expensive limbo, as the O2 Arena, a popular showcase for cryogenic rock acts:Norma Desmond divas and the resurrected Michael Jackson, whose virtual rebirth,post-mortem, gave the shabby tent the status of a riverside cathedral. ~ Iain Sinclair

I'm quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to film making. Maybe there's also another alternative, that's walking on foot. ~ Werner Herzog

At the press conference for the film he impressed everyone with his complete sincerity and innocence. he said he had come to see the sea for the first time and marveled at how clean it was. someone told him that, in fact, it wasn't. 'when the world is emptied of human beings' he said, 'it will become so again ~ Werner Herzog

The troubled middle is…a place where it's possible to truly love animals and still accept their occasional role as resources, objects, and tools. Those of us in the troubled middle believe that animals deserve to be treated well, but we don't want to ban their use in medical research. We care enough to want livestock to be raised humanely, but don't want to abandon meat-eating altogether. 'Some argue that we are fence-sitters, moral wimps,' Herzog, himself a resident of the troubled middle, writes. 'I believe, however, that the troubled middle makes perfect sense because moral quagmires are inevitable in a species with a huge brain and a big heart. They come with the territory. ~ Emily Anthes

I'm a very circumspect and prudent person, and I eliminate danger as far as it can be done. ~ Werner Herzog

I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment. ~ Werner Herzog

A perfect morning; in perfect harmony with myself I'm walking briskly uphill ... For once I didn't notice that I was walking, all the way up to the mountaintop forest I was absorbed in deep thought. Perfect clarity and freshness in the air, up further there's some snow. The tangerines make me completely euphoric. ~ Werner Herzog

May I propose a Herzog dictum? those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it. ~ Werner Herzog

I'm not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming - I've always been a man of the theaters. ~ Werner Herzog

In the evening I finished reading a book, and because I was feeling so alone, I buried the book on the edge of the forest with a borrowed spade. ~ Werner Herzog

If, as has been postulated before, heroism happens when courage meets circumstance, what if the circumstances are mundane? ~ Brad Herzog

Pretty much everyone on my iPod, I'd like to be friends with. But I'd say that the main two that I'd love to get into a conversation with, are Werner Herzog and Graham Hancock. ~ Finn Jones

What's really bad is that after acknowledging a wrong decision, I don't have the nerve to turn back, since I'd rather correct myself with another wrong decision. ~ Werner Herzog

If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him. ~ Werner Herzog

The only way to make money as a manager is to win in one place, get fired and hired somewhere else. ~ Whitey Herzog

Has Werner Herzog ever said anything that wasn't true? What a brilliant fountain of wisdom. Everything he touches I'm just fascinated by. ~ Dan Gilroy

I really admire Werner Herzog and Spike Lee. They're amazing documentarians. If you took away all the narratives, they'd just be amazing documentarians. ~ Ava DuVernay

Let's put it this way: art house theaters are vanishing. They have almost disappeared completely, and that means there's a shift in what audiences want to see. And they have to be aware of that and be realistic. It's as simple as that. ~ Werner Herzog

Public life drives out private life. The more political our society becomes (in the broadest sense of 'political' - the obsessions, the compulsions of collectivity) the more individuality seems lost. … [N]ational purpose is now involved with the manufacture of commodities in no way essential to human life, but vital to the political survival of the country. … The whole matter … has to do with invasion of the private sphere (including the sexual) by techniques of exploitation and domination. ~ Saul Bellow

I am so used to plunging into the unknown that any other surroundings and form of existence strike me as exotic and unsuitable for human beings. ~ Werner Herzog

It is not only my dreams, my belief is that all these dreams are yours as well. The only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate them. And that is what poetry or painting or literature or filmmaking is all about ... and it is my duty because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are. We have to articulate ourselves, otherwise we would be cows in the field. ~ Werner Herzog

Well they are very frightening for me because their stupidity is so flat. You look into the eyes of a chicken and you lose yourself in a completely flat, frightening stupidity. They are like a great metaphor for me ... I kind of love chicken, but they frighten me more than any other animal. ~ Werner Herzog

I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard. ~ Werner Herzog

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence. ~ Werner Herzog

We live in an era when established values are no longer valid, when prodigious discoveries are being made every year, when catastrophes of unbelievable proportions occur weekly. In ancient Greek the word "chaos" means "gaping void" or "yawning emptiness." The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema. ~ Werner Herzog

If you're purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn't illuminate. ~ Werner Herzog