Oliver Stone Quotes

Hell is the impossibility of reason. ~ Oliver Stone

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that. ~ Oliver Stone

I love films. I love fiction films, too. I do. I love making them, but it has to be the right one. Hopefully, I'll never become a director for hire. It's horrible to make a film that you're not really interested in. ~ Oliver Stone

Obama is now fighting for his life. He's fighting for a federal government. I believe in a federal government. I hope it sticks around. We had the American Revolution. There was this whole tension between the federalists and the anti-federalists. Then we had the Civil War. We had Lincoln fighting for it. And the secessionists were there. And we have the same issue today. ~ Oliver Stone

What scares me most about the media is that so many of them don't realize that by presenting and highlighting certain issues, opinions, and perspectives over others, they can manipulate and control people's beliefs in subtle ways. ~ Oliver Stone

I like automatic weapons. I fought for my right to use them in Vietnam. ~ Oliver Stone

I'm terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. ~ Oliver Stone

I might as well be myself. Everyone else is taken. ~ Oliver Stone

According to Japanese scholar Yuki Tanaka, the United States firebombed over a hundred Japanese cities. Destruction reached 99.5 percent in the city of Toyama, driving Secretary of War Henry Stimson to tell Truman he "did not want to have the US get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities," though Stimson did almost nothing to halt the slaughter. He had managed to delude himself into believing Arnold's promise that he would limit "damage to civilians." Future Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who was on LeMay's staff in 1945, agreed with his boss's comment that of the United States lost the war, they'd all be tried as war criminals and deserved to be convicted.
Hatred towards the Japanese ran so deep that almost no one objected to the mass slaughter of civilians. ~ Oliver Stone

JFK was leading the world, leading the United States into a new position with the Soviet Union. He was calling for the end of the Cold War. He would have been reelected in 1964 because he was vastly popular. ~ Oliver Stone

I make my films like you're going to die if you miss the next minute. You better not go get popcorn. ~ Oliver Stone

Football is mesmerizing, because it's a figurative war. You go in one direction till you get there, but you get there as a team, not as an individual. Players bond whether they're black or white, much as soldiers do. ~ Oliver Stone

Lunch is for wimps. ~ Oliver Stone

When Arthur Schlesinger Sr. pioneered the 'presidential greatness poll' in 1948, the top five were Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jefferson. Only Wilson appears to be seriously fading, probably because his support for the World War I-era Sedition Act now seems outrageous; in this analogy, Woodrow is like the Doors and the Sedition Act is Oliver Stone. ~ Chuck Klosterman

Unfortunately, the truth is that people do go scot-free and it's unfair. A lot of the top drug people who have been arrested are also free. ~ Oliver Stone

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. ... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. ~ Oliver Stone

The second [presidential] term changes, and I think that John F. Kennedy certainly ran on that and he knew that second term would give him oxygen, and he needed it. Unfortunately, he didn't get there. ~ Oliver Stone

I guess I feel like it's a gift to meet those talented artists like George Lucas and Oliver Stone, Spike Lee and Richard Kelly. Even if it's a small role, it's a gift to be working that closely with them. ~ Bai Ling

One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia. ~ Oliver Stone

I was lost, and that war [in Vietnam] was very alienating - not that I was against it or for it, but I was just lost after that war. As were many Americans. ~ Oliver Stone

I'd love to do historical pictures more, but I don't know if I can. ~ Oliver Stone

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other religions were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do. ~ Oliver Stone

Venezuela is a democratically elected government. These people who keep protesting are sore losers, ~ Oliver Stone

I've been to war, and it's not easy to kill. It's bloody and messy and totally horrifying, and the consequences are serious. ~ Oliver Stone

Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another. This painting here. I bought it 10 years ago for 60 thousand dollars. I could sell it today for 600. The illusion has become real and the more real it becomes, the more desperately they want it. ~ Oliver Stone

The one thing I learned is that the Russians are some of the most cunning people on earth. They never do anything without a very good reason. And just because they're no longer a superpower doesn't mean they don't want to be again. - Oliver Stone ~ David Baldacci

Oliver Stone is a great director and I've seen many films over the years, but I try to create stuff out of my own imagination. I want to break all the rules and mess about with it and make a different movie just for the fun of it. ~ Anthony Hopkins

The worst nightmare I ever had about Vietnam was that I had to go back. I woke up in a sweat, in total terror. ~ Oliver Stone

I couldn't despise a man more than George W. Bush. ~ Oliver Stone

Independence is a state of mind. Independence is spirit without category. ~ Oliver Stone

I've liked different women at different times in my life. I've been attracted to white women. I've been attracted to black women. I've been attracted to Asian women. I've been attracted to various subspecies of women. I can say with gratitude that I've been able to experiment. ~ Oliver Stone

I'd like to be honest to my time, and I lived from 1946, and I want to understand why our country, which I love so much, and was a great country when I was young, it seemed, became this monster vampire on the face of humanity- a vampire squid, to quote Matt Taibbi, sucking out the juices of all mankind. Why? It's a basic question. ~ Oliver Stone

As we know, Clay Shaw was acquitted, and the establishment celebrated
another victory over the truth. In my view, Ferrie, Banister, Shaw, and Jack
Ruby would have been the conspirators Oswald worked with personally, on
the ground level, while far more powerful forces manipulated everything
behind the scenes. I share Jim Garrison's theory that Oswald was some kind
of intelligence operative who was assigned to infiltrate what he was told was
a plot to kill the president, shortly before the actual assassination. At least
that's where I think the evidence logically leads. ~ Donald Jeffries

The secret to writing a screenplay is keeping you ass in the chair.
(ASS + CHAIR = PAGES!) ~ Oliver Stone

I wish that George W. Bush had gone to Vietnam, because he would have seen history in a different light. He would've experienced it in a different light because I don't think he understood the nature of war. ~ Oliver Stone

Despite the well-deserved criticism, controlling public opinion became a central element in all future war planning. ~ Oliver Stone

To fail is not tragic. To be human, is. ~ Oliver Stone

Director Oliver Stone says he's going to make a movie about Vladimir Putin. I can't believe anyone would want to work with that insane communist. And Putin is a little crazy as well. ~ Craig Ferguson

I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power. ~ Oliver Stone

I have the right to interpretation as a dramatist. I research. It's my responsibility to find the research. It's my responsibility to digest it and do the best that I can with it. But at a certain point that responsibility will become an interpretation. ~ Oliver Stone

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone. ~ Anthony Hopkins

If we [Americans] are a strong people, a united people, why do we always have to hear how great we are? What is this self-love? Where does this come from? It got worse, because after the war we thought we'd won it. That's the first myth. Frankly, Russia won it. The Soviet Union sacrificed far greater form than anyone else to win that war. Secondly, we had the atomic bomb. We should not have dropped it on Japan. We did as an example to the Soviets, not to defeat Japan and to save American lives. These are myths that we explode with a lot of research early on. ~ Oliver Stone

[Nixon] reduced the meaning of his life to nothing but power. In the film, we gave this sad figure consciousness of what he was. We weren't right to do that - I don't think he did have that consciousness. But we did it for movie reasons - to create empathy. ~ Oliver Stone

You do the best job you can. You take it step by step. It's hard enough to make a movie. If it works, that's great. If it means something beyond the moment to somebody, they can take it and it lasts through the years, we'll see. ~ Oliver Stone

I have skipped from style to style from film to film, and I love doing that because it's given me the ability to free myself from the past. Perhaps one of the worst feelings that I can have is the feeling that I'm locked in, like a prisoner of myself, which is something we all feel at some point in our lives. So part of making those stylistic jumps is just to free myself up-to get away from the old or the old Oliver Stone. ~ Oliver Stone

I've done movies with Oliver Stone and Michael Mann. And I've done quite a few dramas in my time, from the theatre to film work. I just think the audience is used to seeing me on 'Saturday Night Live,' and 'K-9,' and 'Curly Sue' and of course, 'According to Jim.' I think that my comedies have been the most popular. ~ James Belushi

Bin Laden was completely protected by the oil companies in this country who told [President] Bush not to go after him because it would piss off the Saudis. ~ Oliver Stone

A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well, but she'll appear in film and it won't work. What works is some fusion of physical beauty with some mental field or whatever you call it. I don't know. ~ Oliver Stone

With his ABC News experience, perhaps Pierre Salinger's next job could be cohosting-with Oliver Stone-a 24-hour Conspiracy Network. ~ Jonathan Alter

Well first of all you have to make the character strong so that people can follow that. And then hopefully that character can integrate with the background of the social situation that people can recognize. ~ Oliver Stone

I met Michael Milken for the first time with Oliver Stone at the Drexel Burnham offices in Los Angeles. ~ Michael Douglas

I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations. ~ Oliver Stone

I enjoy sports. I get a real joy from playing sports but I don't look for those movies. Oliver Stone wanted to know if I would do Any Given Sunday and it just didn't appeal to me. ~ Kevin Costner

I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history. ~ Oliver Stone

I'm a dramatist. Dramatists have a right to look at history and interpret it the way they see it. ~ Oliver Stone

[When making movies I] set out to be authentic to [myself] and to put it down the way [I] feel it and know it and interpret it. And then others sometimes key into it and get it. ~ Oliver Stone

I'd like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you'd sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling. ~ Oliver Stone

As much as I hate his movies, Oliver Stone has an aspiration I admire, and that is that he wants his art to be part of what makes and changes public policy and cultural practice. ~ Tony Kushner

If anything, if you can get somebody interested in something and get them excited, that's great. You should be praised for having opened the debate and having asked the right questions. ~ Oliver Stone

[Fidel Castro] has a very good [human rights] record. ~ Oliver Stone

I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take. ~ Oliver Stone

Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. ~ Oliver Stone

I'm going to hold onto my Blu-ray collection because I really think it's hardware and it's important. I don't want to live in a cloud, all my life. ~ Oliver Stone

I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.' ~ Greil Marcus

We all have idealism. We think we're healthy and then, all of a sudden, one day, you have cancer. The truth has a mind of its own. ~ Oliver Stone

You don't always have to have an e-book. You can have a real book. I'd like to see the old way maintain. ~ Oliver Stone

I would vote for the man who's lived life, who's done different occupations, who's been out in the real world and struggled to make a living, struggled to raise a family, struggled with life as it exists. So I'd vote for experience, honest experience. ~ Oliver Stone

Films might get to you and your subconscious and make a little difference, but when the vigilante drum beats, the mob screams and the conformists go along with it. There have to be people who are non-conformists. ~ Oliver Stone

Either you're born crazy or you're born boring. ~ Oliver Stone

Nobody makes movies like Oliver Stone. ~ Shia Labeouf

I've met people who will go to a movie that I can't stand and they say that they saw that movie ten times. There's something they like and identified in that movie, and I don't see it. ~ Oliver Stone

What Chavez has done [in Venezuela] is that he has brought extreme poverty to an end. ~ Oliver Stone

The Nation observed, If you steal $25, you're a thief. If you steal $250,000, you're an embezzler. If you steal $2,500,000, you're a financier. ~ Oliver Stone

The alchemist was dazed and dumbfounded, as the true meaning of the magic was revealed: *The dead will rise from glade to glen and ancient will be young again*. The dead had, after all, risen. From dead and dry things there was growth, and new life everywhere. And the endlessly long winter had at last turned to spring.
From life to death and back again to life. It was indeed the greatest magic in the world. ~ Lauren Oliver

Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not

otherwise established. ~ Mary Oliver

Sharon Stone has the kind of face I'd leave my wife for. Since I'm not married, I'll have to leave someone else's wife. ~ Buck Henry

Every foundation stone that is laid for a Temple, and every Temple completed according to the order the Lord has revealed for his holy Priesthood, lessens the power of Satan on the earth, and increases the power of God and Godliness. ~ George Q. Cannon

We have met the enemy and they are ours. ~ Oliver Hazard Perry

Real food doesn't have ingredients, real food is
ingredients. ~ Jamie Oliver

You have to have the right sort of stone. Peridot for mothers, girasol for lovers, sapphire for sadness, and garnet for joy. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Alas! the joys that fortune brings
Are trifling, and decay,
And those who prize the trifling things,
More trifling still than they. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

I'll say that I don't think you can throw a stone and not come in contact with someone who knows someone or has problems with substance abuse. ~ Octavia Spencer

Back in the day, in '91 or so, I tried to interview Fugazi for Rolling Stone, which the band felt stood for everything they detested about corporate infiltration of music. They said, 'We'll do the interview if you give us a million dollars of cash in a suitcase.' Which was their way of saying no. ~ Michael Azerrad

In order to gain mastery, you need to dismantle as much as you put together.'
'Then there'd be no buildings left in the world,' Jahan ventured. 'Everything would be razed to the ground.'
'We are not destroying the buildings, son. We are destroying our desire to possess them. Only God is the owner. Of the stone and of the skill. ~ Elif Shafak

The majority of people are carried along like the falling stone, obedient to environment, outside influences and internal moods, desires etc., not to speak of the desires and wills of others stronger than themselves, heredity, environment, and suggestion, carrying them along without resistance on their part, or the exercise of the Will. Moved like the pawns on the checkerboard of life, they play their parts and are laid aside after the game is over. But the Masters, knowing the rules of the game, rise above the plane of material life, and placing themselves in touch with the higher powers of their nature, dominate their own moods, characters, qualities, and polarity, as well as the environment surrounding them and thus become Movers in the game, instead of Pawns - Causes instead of Effects. The Masters do not escape the Causation of the higher planes, but fall in with the higher laws, and thus master circumstances on the lower plane. They thus form a conscious part of the Law, instead of being mere blind instruments. While they Serve on the Higher Planes, they Rule on the Material Plane. ~ Three Initiates

His months of teaching experience were now a lost age of youth and innocence. He could no longer sit in his office at Fort McNair, look out over the elm trees and the golf course, and encompass the world within "neat, geometric patterns" that fit within equally precise lectures. Policy planning was a very different responsibility, but explaining just how was "like trying to describe the mysteries of love to a person who has never experienced it."

There was, however, an analogy that might help. "I have a largish farm in Pennsylvania."...it had 235 acres, on each of which things were happening. Weekends, in theory, were days of rest. But farms defied theory:

Here a bridge is collapsing. No sooner do you start to repair it than a neighbor comes to complain about a hedge row which you haven't kept up half a mile away on the other side of the farm. At that very moment your daughter arrives to tell you that someone left the gate to the hog pasture open and the hogs are out. On the way to the hog pasture, you discover that the beagle hound is happily liquidating one of the children's pet kittens. In burying the kitten you look up and notice a whole section of the barn roof has been blown off and needs instant repair. Somebody shouts from the bathroom window that the pump has stopped working, and there's no water in the house. At that moment, a truck arrives with five tons of stone for the lane. And as you stand there hopelessly, wondering which of these crises ~ John Lewis Gaddis

London - beautiful, immortal London - has never been a 'city' in the simplest sense of the word. It was, and is, a living, breathing thing, a stone leviathan that harbours secrets underneath its scales. It guards them covetously, hiding them deep within its body; only the mad or the worthy can find them. ~ Samantha Shannon

If I carried Catherine to the top of Mount Corcovado and placed her before the statue of Christ the Redeemer, Jesus would close his eyes and turn his back on her. If she touched his feet, the six million stone tiles that covered the religious figure would catch fire and fall like fiery rain, ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

I want to be alone. I need to touch each stone, face the grave that I have grown. I want to be alone. ~ Jackson C. Frank

I still wanted to know why. As though somebody was going to answer that for me, as though any answer would be satisfying. ~ Lauren Oliver

Police: NY bus driver drove drunk with 35 students on board CORTLANDT, N.Y. (AP) - Police say a school bus driver was driving drunk with 35 students on board when she sideswiped a utility pole in suburban New York. It happened Monday as 56-year-old Mary Coletti was taking students to Walter Panas High School in Cortdandt. Authorities say she sideswiped the pole around 7 a.m. They say her blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit of .08 percent. A few students suffered minor injuries. Lakeland School District Superintendent George Stone tells The Journal News Coletti's bus driver's license has been revoked. Coletti was arraigned Monday and sent to jail on $1,000 bail. She's due back in court May 18. It's unclear if she has an attorney. Posted: ~ Anonymous

The Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion primarily because it is the most extended and definitive witness we have of the Lord Jesus Christ
of our Alpha and Omega, the Key Stone, the Chief Cornerstone of the eternal gospel. Christ is our salvation, and the Book of Mormon declares that message unequivocally to the world. In its message of faith in Christ, hope in Christ, and charity in Christ, the Book of Mormon is God's "new covenant" to his children
for the last time. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Sixteen unseeing stone of disheveled male slammed into her; Robin was knocked off her feet and catapulted backwards, handbag flying, arms windmilling, towards the void beyond the lethal staircase. ~ Robert Galbraith

Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea when lizards first came into being, and now the flood is wearing it away, to return it once again into the oceans. ~ Peter Matthiessen

I guess that's the really nice thing about disappearing: the part where people look for you and beg you to come home. ~ Lauren Oliver

Lark frowned. "I thought she was associated with fate. Her Arcana name's Our Lady of Fate."

"As she desired it to be," he said. "But it's a very liberal translation."

I'd thought these Arcana things were set in stone. Now the goalposts were moving.

He downed that shot, then poured another. "She appears to control fate, but she doesn't have any influence over what happens to her. Her power is passive. She doesn't read the future and consciously affect it - not like the Fool does." Aric's gaze grew distant. "Ages ago, Fortune was known more accurately as Lady Luck. The Fool was known as the Hand of Fate. She despised him for that and envied his power. ~ Kresley Cole

... faith is like a mad beast - once it's broken out, it can no longer be controlled. ~ Oliver Potzsch

Writers are storytellers. So are readers. ~ Oliver North

Every time you use the Dragonflame philosophy, you refine your subtle body and stengthen your will by going through the process of separating the dross from the subtle and putting it back together again. Every time you follow this magical philosophy, you are doing what is know as the Great Work. In other words, every time you work magic using Dragonflame, you get closer to finding the Philosopher's Stone. ~ Lawren Leo

At the top of the hill stood a cross and a little below at the bottom was a stone tomb. In my dream, just as Christian came up to the cross his burden loosened from his shoulders and fell off his back. It tumbled and continued to do so down the hill until it came to the mouth of the tomb where it fell inside and was seen no more. Christian was so glad and overjoyed and in his excitement he said, He has given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death. ~ John Bunyan